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THE    CHURCHMAN'S    LIBRARY 

EDITED    I!Y 

JOHN    HENRY    BURN,    B.D. 

Examining  Chaplain  to  the  Lord  Bisliop  of  Aberdeen. 

THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  ENGLISH  CHRISTIANITY.     By  \V    E. 

Collins,   M.A.,   Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  History,   Kings  College, 

London.     Crgwn  8vo.  3^.  td.  [Heady. 

THE    WORKMANSHIP    OF    THE    PRAYER    BOOK.      By    John 

DowDEN,  D.D.,  Bishopof  Edinburgh.  Crown  8vo,  35.  6d.  [Heady. 
SOME    NEW    TESTAMENT    PROBLEMS.      By   Arthlr   Wright, 

M.A.,    Fellow  and  Tutor  of  Queens'   College,    Cambridge.      Crown 

8vo,  6s.  [Ready. 

EVOLUTION.    By  Frank  B.  Jevons,  M.A.,  D.Litt.,  Principal  of  Bishop 

Hatfield's  Hall,  Durham.     Crown  Svo,  3^.  6d.  [Ready. 

THE  KINGDOM   OF  HE.WEN  HERE  AND   HEREAFTER.     By 

Canon  Winterbotham,  M.A.,  B.Sc,  LL.B.  Cr.  Svo,  y.kd.  [Ready. 
THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  THE   NEW  SCHOLARSHIP.     By 

John  P.  Peters,  Ph.D.,  Sc.D.,  D.D.     Crown  Svo,  6s. 
THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  SACRAMENTS.     By  E.  T.  Green,  M.A., 

Professor  of  Hebrew  and  Theology  at  St.  David's  College,  Lampeter. 
THE  CHURCHMAN'S  PRIMER.     By  G.  Harford-Battersby,  M.A. 
THE  CHURCHMAN'S  DAY  BOOK.     By  J.  H.  Burn,  B.D. 
THE  ANGLICAN  CHURCH  IN  THE  COLONIES  AND  MISSION 

FIELD.     By  Allan  B.  Webb,  D.D. 
HLSTORV  OF  THE  PAPACY.     By  J.  P.  Whitney,  M.A. 
OUR  COxNTROVERSY  WITH  ROME.     By  J.  M.  Danson,  D.D. 
A   POPULAR    INTRODUCTION    TO    THE    OLD   TESTAMENT. 

By  Angis  M.  Mackay,  B.A. 
A   POPULAR    INTRODUCTION   TO   THE    NEW  TESTAMENT. 

By  J.   H.  Shepherd,  M.A. 
THE  HEBREW  PROPHET.     By  L.  W.  Batten,  Ph.D. 
AN    INTRODUCTION    TO    TEXTUAL    CRITICISM.      By   A.    M. 

Knight,  M.A.,  Fellow  and  Dean  of  Gonville  and  Caius  College,  Camb. 
BIBLE  REVISION.  By  J.  J.  S.  Perowne,  D.D.,  Bishop  of  Worcester. 
DEVOTIONAL  ANALYSIS  OF  THE  PAULINE   EPISTLES.     By 

John  Gott,   D.D.,   Bishop  of  Truro. 
PREACHING.     By  Frederic  Relton,  A.K.C. 
THE  WITNESS  OF  ARCHAEOLOGY.     By  C.  J.  Ball,  M.A. 
ENGLISH  ECCLESIOLOGY.     By  J.  N.  Compek. 
CONFIRMATION.     By  H.  T.  Kingdon,  D.D.,  Bishop  of  Fredericton. 
INSPIRATION.     By  Canon  Benuam,  D.D. 
MIRACLES.     By  Thomas  B.  Strong,  B.D.,  Student  of  Christ  Church, 

Oxford. 
PROVIDENCE  AND  PRAYER.     By  V.  H.  Stanton,  D.D.,  Ely  Pro- 
fessor of  Divinity,  Cambridge. 
THE  ATONEMENT.     By   R.   M.   Benson,  M.A.,  Student  of  Christ 

Church,  Oxford. 
THE  GREAT  WORLD  RELIGIONS  FROM  A  CHRISTIAN  STAND- 
POINT.     By  H.  E.  J.  Bhvan,  M.A.,  Gresham  Professor  of  Divinity. 
COMPARATIVE  RELIGION.     By  J.  A.  MacCilloch. 
ENGLISH  ECCLESIASTICAL  LAW.     I'.y  W.  Digiw  Thurnam. 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT 


AND 


THE   NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 


/  BY 

JOHN   P.    PETERS,    Ph.D.,  Sc.D.,  D.D. 

RECTOR    OF    ST.    MICHAELS    CHURCH,    NEW    YORK 


NEW    YORK 

THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

LONDON:    METHUEN  &  CO. 

1902 


THIS   VOLUME 

IS    DEDICATED    TO    THE    MEMORY    OF    HIM 

WHO    WAS    ALIKE 

MY    FLESHLY    AND    MY    SPIRITUAL 

FATHER 


AUTHOR'S    PREFACE 


TO  consider  all  the  Old  Testament  problems  which 
are,  at  the  present  moment,  calling  for  solution 
would  be  far  too  large  a  field  for  one  small  volume. 
My  effort  has  been  to  set  before  the  reader  first  of  all 
the  fundamental  problems  involved  in  the  acceptance 
of  the  Old  Testament  as  Sacred  Scripture,  and  in  this 
part  of  the  work  I  have  been  obliged  to  consider  to 
some  extent  the  New  Testament  also,  since  New  and 
Old  are  inextricably  bound  together.  To  these  funda- 
mental problems — how  the  Bible  has  been  and  should 
be  treated,  what  is  to  be  understood  by  the  inspiration 
of  the  Sacred  Scriptures,  the  teaching  of  the  Church 
with  regard  to  those  Scriptures,  and  the  application  of 
the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  to  the  study  of  the 
written  Word — I  have  devoted  the  first  of  the  four 
parts  of  which  this  volume  is  composed. 

In  the  second  part  I  have  endeavoured  to  trace  briefly 
the  history  of  that  thought-development  which  has  re- 
sulted in  the  modern  methods  of  Bible  study,  commonly, 
but  erroneously,  called  "Higher  Criticism,"  and  to  show 
more  particularly  how  the  application  of  the  principles 
of  evolution  and  comparison  has  affected  our  view  of 
the  history  of  the  religion  of  Israel. 

In  the  third  part  I  have  attempted  to  give  an  illustra- 
tion of  modern  methods  of  Bible  study  in  general  by  a 
particular  application  in  the  case  of  one  book — Psalms. 


X  PREFACE 

Finally,  I  have  devoted  the  fourth  and  last  part  to  a 
survey  of  archaeological  discoveries  bearing  on  the  Old 
Testament,  and  the  treatment  of  a  few  points  in  which 
the  history  of  the  religious,  political,  and  literary  history 
of  Israel  has  been  illuminated  by  archaeological  re- 
search, concluding,  as  in  the  former  part,  by  a  more 
particular  illustration  in  the  treatment  of  one  book — 
Daniel. 

I  have  chosen  the  problems  of  the  books  of  Psalms 
and  Daniel  for  more  especial  consideration,  partly 
because  in  recent  writings  on  the  Old  Testament — 
Introductions,  Commentaries,  and  the  like — these  two 
books  seem  to  me  to  have  received  the  least  satisfactory 
treatment,  but  chiefly  because,  having  made  a  more 
special  study  of  these  books,  I  am  more  at  home  in 
them  and  better  able  to  contribute  something  new  to 
their  discussion. 

Some  of  the  chapters  of  this  volume  have  already 
appeared  in  substance  in  various  publications,  and  one, 
the  chapter  on  "The  Bible,  the  Church,  and  Reason," 
was  read  before  the  American  Church  Congress  in  New 
York,  in  1893.  All  these  have  been  revised  or  entirely 
rewritten  for  the  present  volume,  so  that,  while  it  seems 
proper  to  make  this  acknowledgment  of  former  use,  it 
is  only  fair  to  my  readers  and  myself  to  say  that  all 
such  material  has  been  subjected  to  a  new  and  careful 
study  in  the  light  of  more  recent  discoveries  and  in- 
vestigations. 

With  these  words  of  explanation,  I  commend  the 
volume  to  the  kind  consideration  of  my  readers,  trusting 
that  it  may  help  some  who  are  perplexed  over  Old 
Testament  problems. 


CONTENTS 


Part  I 
THE   FUNDAMENTAL   DOCTRINE  OF   THE   BIBLE 

CHAPTER  l-AGE 

I.  The  English  Bible         .               .               ...  3 

II.  The  Bible,  the  Church,  and  Reason      .            .        .  24 

III.  The  Incarnation  and  the  Newer  Criticism      .        .  39 

IV.  Our  Lord's  Treatment  of  the  Old  Testament        .  55 

Part  II 
EVOLUTION   AND   THE  BIBLE 

V.   Modern  Study  of  the  Bible      .  .  .        .      81 

VI.   The  Religious  Evolution  of  Israel     .    .  .        .      99 

VII.   The  Rise  and  Development  of  the  Messianic  Hope    135 

Part  III 
THE  BOOK  OF   PSALMS 
VIII.   The  Growth  of  the  Jewish  Psalter       .  .        .     155 

IX.   Psalm  Headings  .  .  ...     184 

X.   The  Story  of  the  Prayer  Book  Psalter  .        .194 

Part  IV 
ARCHAEOLOGY  AND  THE  BIBLE 

XI.  A  Review  of  Results    .  .  . 

XII.  How  THE  Old  Testament  was  Written  . 

XIII.  Stone  Worship 

XIV.  The  Ark  .... 
XV.  The  Book  of  Daniel     . 


Appendix  on  the  Virgin  Birth 
Index . 


237 
256 
276 
284 
293 

317 

323 


Part  I 

THE    FUNDAMENTAL   DOCTRINE 
OF    THE    BIBLE 


THE    OLD    TESTAMENT 
AND  THE   NEW   SCHOLARSHIP 

CHAPTER   I 
THE    ENGLISH    BIBLE 

I.    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT 

THE  books  of  the  Hebrew  Bible  are  arranged  in  three 
great  divisions,  called,  respectively.  The  Law,  The 
Prophets,  and  The  Writings.  The  first  of  these  great  sections, 
the  Law,  comprises  the  five  books  which  we  commonly  call 
the  Pentateuch.  These  five  books  are  treated  in  the  Hebrew 
as  one  whole,  and  called  not  "the  five  books,"  but  "the  five 
parts  of  the  Law."  These  five  parts  are  named,  respectively, 
after  the  words  with  which  they  commence :  "  In  the  begin- 
ning," "  And  these  are  the  names,"  "  And  he  called,"  "  In  the 
wilderness"  (not  the  first  but  almost  the  first  word  of  Numbers 
in  the  Hebrew  original),  and  "These  are  the  words." 

The  second  great  division,  called  the  Prophets,  is  divided 
into  two  sections,  called,  respectively,  the  Former  Prophets  and 
the  Latter  Prophets,  each  of  which  consists  of  four  books  :  the 
Former  Prophets  being  Joshua,  Judges,  Samuel  (in  two  parts), 
and  Kings  (also  in  two  parts);  and  the  Latter  Prophets  consisting 
of  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  Ezekiel,  and  the  Twelve,  that  is  the  twelve 
minor  prophets,  Hosea,  Joel,  Amos,  Obadiah,  Jonah,  Micah, 
Nahum,  Habakkuk,  Zephaniah,  Haggai,  Zechariah,  and  Malachi, 
which  are  regarded  as  one  book,  and  are  arranged  among 
themselves  in  a  purely  haphazard  manner,  as  it  would  seem, 
and  not  according  to  any  system  that  has  yet  been  discovered. 

The  third  great  division,  the  Writings,  consists  of  Psalms, 


4    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Proverbs,  Job,  Song  of  Songs,  Ruth,  Lamentations,  Preacher, 
Esther,  Daniel,  Ezra,  Nehemiah,  and  Chronicles  (in  two  parts), 
in  tne  order  and  under  the  titles  given. 

The  significance  of  this  arrangement  is  not  hard  to  find, 
and  its  historical  value  is  very  considerable  in  determining  the 
date  and  the  mutual  relations  of  the  books  which  compose 
the  canon.  The  great  divisions  which  we  have  observed  mark 
three  stages  in  the  growth  of  the  Old  Testament  canon,  or 
perhaps  we  might  say  three  canons  of  the  Old  Testament.  The 
original  Bible  of  the  Hebrews  was  the  Law.  This  was  adopted 
as  the  canon  of  Holy  Scripture  about  B.C.  440.  Other  books 
existed  at  that  time,  some  of  which  were  held  in  great  rever- 
ence and  ultimately  accepted  as  Holy  Scripture ;  but  at  the 
outset  the  Law  alone  was  canonised,  and  to  this  day  it  has 
never  lost  the  position  of  primacy  thus  given  to  it.  In  our 
Lord's  time  it  was  regarded  as  possessing  a  sanctity  above 
the  books  of  the  later  canon  of  the  Prophets,  a  fact  em- 
phasised in  the  synagogue  reading,  as  well  as  in  the  greater 
attention  paid  to  the  study  of  the  Law  by  the  schoolmen. 
The  Law  having  been  adopted  as  canon  at  an  earlier  date 
than  the  other  books,  became  the  Bible  of  the  Samaritan  as 
well  as  of  the  Jew,  while  the  Prophets  and  the  Writings, 
adopted  by  the  latter  after  the  hatred  between  the  two 
churches  had  become  intense,  were  not  accepted  by  the 
former.  It  is  owing  to  this  fact  that  there  have  come  down 
to  us  two  independent  Hebrew  texts  of  the  Pentateuch,  the 
text  of  the  Jewish  and  the  text  of  the  Samaritan  Church, 
whereas  we  have  but  one  Hebrew  text  of  the  remainder  of 
the  Old  Testament.  We  are  thus  enabled  to  control  the 
text  of  the  Pentateuch  from  a  critical  standpoint,  as  we  cannot 
in  the  Prophets  and  the  Writings,  where,  besides  the  one 
official  Jewish  text,  we  have  only  translations  into  other 
languages.  It  ought  to  be  added  that,  owing  to  the  greater 
antiquity  of  the  canon  of  the  Law,  the  greater  veneration  in 
which  it  was  always  held,  and  the  greater  attention  paid  to  its 
study,  the  text  has  come  down  to  us  in  a  better  and  purer 
condition  than  the  text  of  any  other  part  of  the  Old  Testament. 


THE   ENGLISH    BIBLE  5 

The  second  canon  of  Holy  Scripture  adopted  by  the  Jews, 
and  added  to  the  canon  of  the  Law,  was  the  canon  of  the 
Prophets.  These  were  canonised  officially,  it  is  commonly/^ 
supposed,  about  B.C.  200.  This  does  not  mean  that  the 
writings  of  the  prophets,  or  most  of  them,  had  not  been  in 
existence  long  before  this  date,  or  that  these  writings  or  the 
greater  part  of  them  had  not  been  held  in  respect  or  even 
counted  sacred  before  this  date,  but  that  this  is  the  date  at 
which  that  canon  was  officially  determined  and  the  limit  of 
the  Prophets  fixed.  But  although  thus  canonised,  the  Prophets 
were  never  regarded,  as  already  pointed  out,  as  quite  so  sacred 
as  the  Law.  In  the  service  of  the  synagogues  the  readings  ^ 
from  the  Prophets  held  an  inferior  position.  For  this  reason 
also,  as  stated  above,  the  text  of  the  Prophets  was  not  studied 
and  handed  down  with  so  great  care,  so  that  while  the  text 
of  the  Pentateuch  has  come  down  to  us  in  a  practically 
perfect  form,  that  of  the  Prophets  presents  many  difficulties, 
owing  to  corruption  of  the  original.  But  there  is  another 
reason  also  for  the  comparatively  corrupt  condition  in  which 
the  text  of  some  of  the  prophetical  books  has  come  down  to 
us,  namely,  the  long  period  which  elapsed  between  the  period 
of  their  composition  and  the  period  of  their  canonisation.  It 
is  now  generally  recognised  that  a  great  part  of  the  writings 
known  to  the  Jews  as  "  The  Prophets  "  was  composed  at  an 
earlier  date  than  that  at  which  the  Law  was  put  into  its  final 
shape.  Some  of  the  prophetical  books  were  composed  before 
B.C.  700.  A  period  of  five  hundred  years,  therefore,  elapsed 
between  the  date  of  their  composition  and  the  date  at  which  they 
were  definitely  accepted  as  sacred  canon.  During  this  long 
period  they  were  not  guarded  and  preserved  with  that  careful 
conservatism  with  which  we  are  familiar  in  the  history  of  later 
Judaism,  and  the  opportunity  was  afforded  for  many  curious 
corruptions  and  changes  of  the  text.  What  took  place  can 
be  seen  by  anyone  who  will  compare  the  Septuagint,  or  Greek 
translation,  used  by  the  Jews  of  Alexandria,  with  the  Hebrew 
text  which  has  come  down  to  us,  and  which  was  the  Bible  of 
the  Jews  of  Palestine.     In  the  Law  the  two  are  identical,  with 


6   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

the  exception  of  some  altogether  insignificant  minutiae,  but 
in  some  of  the  books  of  the  canon  of  the  Prophets  the  diver- 
gencies between  the  two  are  quite  startling  to  those  whose 
ideas  of  the  quality  of  inspiration  depend  on  the  letter  rather 
than  on  the  spirit.  So,  for  instance,  in  the  First  Book  of 
Samuel  parts  of  the  story  of  David's  encounter  with  Goliath 
are  lacking  in  the  Septuagint,  namely,  the  part  which  tells  of 
the  way  in  which  David  chanced  to  come  to  the  camp  of 
Israel,  and  his  meeting  with  his  brothers  (i  Sam.  xvii. 
12-31),  and  the  part  which  tells  of  his  interview  with  Saul 
and  Jonathan  after  he  had  slain  Goliath  (chaps,  xvii.  55  to 
xviii.  5).  Indeed,  as  a  general  rule,  in  the  canon  of  the 
Prophets,  the  Septuagint  differs  from  the  Hebrew  by  the 
omission  of  material  which  the  latter  contains.  The  most 
striking  instance  of  this  in  the  whole  canon  is  in  the  Book 
of  Jeremiah,  which  is  about  one-eighth  shorter  in  the  Alex- 
andrine Greek  Bible  than  in  the  Palestinian  Hebrew.  More- 
over, the  arrangement  of  the  contents  of  the  book  is  quite 
different  in  the  two  versions.  It  is  evident  on  examination 
that  the  translators  of  the  Septuagint  had  a  different  Hebrew 
text  before  them  from  that  which  has  come  down  to  us. 
Which  is  the  more  correct?  and  which  stands  nearer  to  the 
original?  On  that  point  opinions  differ,  and  it  is  not  my 
intention  to  go  into  the  matter  here.  I  have  called  attention 
to  the  difference  merely  to  show  the  careless  manner  in  which 
the  text  of  the  Prophets  was  treated  during  the  period  before 
those  books  were  canonised,  in  comparison  with  the  care  be- 
stowed on  the  accurate  preservation  of  the  text  of  the  Law. 

•  The  third  and  last  canon  of  sacred  Scripture  adopted  by  the 
Jewish  Church  was  that  of  the  Writings,  and  it  is  in  this  that 
we  find  those  disputed  books  about  which  a  battle  was  waged 
very  like  the  battle  in  the  Christian  Church  about  some  of  the 
Catholic  Epistles,  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  and  the  Apoca- 
lypse. Even  in  the  age  of  the  Apostles  the  hmit  of  the 
Writings  was  still  in  dispute,  and  we  find  St.  Jude  referring  to 
the  Book  of  Enoch  as  canonical  Scripture.  In  this  he  may  be 
said  to  represent  the  party  of  inclusion  as  over  against  that  of 


THE   ENGLISH    BIBLE  7 

exclusion.  It  was  the  latter  party,  the  especially  anti-Christian 
party,  which  finally  prevailed,  when  about  100  a.d.  the  limits  ^ 
of  the  Writings  were  fixed  by  the  Palestinian  Jews  as  we  now 
have  them.  The  books  in  our  present  canon  about  which  the 
battle  raged  the  hottest  were  the  Song  of  Songs  and  the 
Preacher  or  Ecclesiastes. 

This  last  canon,  as  a  whole,  naturally  took  a  position  of 
authority  inferior  to  that  of  the  Prophets,  just  as  the  Prophets 
were  inferior  to  the  Law.  This  distinction  is  clearly  marked 
in  synagogue  use,  no  lessons  from  the  Writings  being  appointed 
for  the  regular  Sabbath  lessons.  On  certain  festivals,  however, 
five  of  these  books,  the  so-called  Rolls,  were  appointed  to  be 
read,  namely,  the  Song  of  Songs  at  Passover ;  Ruth  at  Pente- 
cost \  Lamentations  at  the  commemoration  of  the  destruction 
of  Jerusalem ;  Ecclesiastes  at  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles ;  and 
Esther  at  Purim.  It  must  not  be  understood,  however,  that 
none  of  the  books  constituting  the  canon  of  the  Writings  were 
regarded  as  sacred  by  the  Jews  before  100  a.d.  It  was  not 
canonisation  of  these  books  which  made  them  sacred :  canon- 
isation was  rather  the  official  recognition  of  what  had  already 
become  the  belief  of  the  Church.  Its  main  effect  was  to 
define  the  limit  of  the  Palestinian  canon  by  cutting  off  some 
of  the  books  which  the  Alexandrian  Jews  had  accepted. 

In  a  general  way,  as  may  be  seen  from  this  resume  of  the 
history  of  the  growth  of  the  Old  Testament  canon,  we  should 
look  for  the  older  books  in  the  older  canon,  and  especially  is 
this  the  case  as  between  the  two  later  canons,  the  Prophets 
and  the  Writings.  In  the  case  of  the  Law  there  is  a  question 
of  difference  in  kind,  the  books  of  that  canon  having  been  set 
off  from  those  that  follow,  not  so  much  on  the  ground  of  age 
as  on  the  ground  of  their  difference  of  contents.  But  as  be- 
tween the  Prophets  and  the  Writings  no  such  difference  of 
contents  exists.  That  which  has  placed  Joshua,  Judges, 
Samuel,  and  Kings  in  the  Prophets,  while  Ezra,  Nehemiah,  ^ 
Chronicles,  and  Esther  are  in  the  Writings,  is  the  difference  of 
date.  At  the  time  when  the  canon  of  the  Prophets  was  fixed  the 
first-mentioned  books  had  been  already  hallowed  by  age,  whereas 


8    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

the  latter  were  either  unwritten  or  comparatively  new.  A 
similar  argument  would  seem  to  hold  good  with  regard  to  the 
exclusion  of  the  prophecies  of  Daniel  from  the  canon  of  the 
Prophets ;  that  at  the  time  when  the  Prophets  were  canonised 
Daniel  was  either  not  in  existence,  or  else  not  yet  sufficiently 
hallowed  by  the  very  important  test  of  antiquity  to  be  admitted 
to  that  canon.  In  a  general  way  the  division  between  the 
Prophets  and  the  .Writings  is  due  to  difference  in  age,  or  at 
least  this  is  true  as  between  books  of  the  same  general  char- 
acter appearing  in  the  two  different  canons.  It  will  be  evident, 
then,  I  think,  from  this  brief  sketch,  that  the  arrangement  of 
the  Hebrew  Bible  possesses  a  considerable  historical  value,  and 
may  be  used  in  helping  us  to  determine  the  mutual  relation  of 
the  books  of  the  Old  Testament. 

At  the  time  when  the  Old  Testament  was  translated  into 
Greek  the  first  canon  of  the  Hebrew  Bible,  the  canon  of  the 
Law,  had  become  so  sacred  that  it  was  taken  over  as  it  stood, 
with  no  change  in  the  order  of  the  books.  But  this  was  not 
the  case  with  the  remainder  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  indeed 
the  Old  Testament  as  we  now  have  it  was  not  in  existence 
at  the  time  that  the  Septuagint  translation  began  to  be  made. 
The  Law,  and  the  Law  only,  was  the  Bible  of  the  Jews.  The 
canon  of  the  Prophets  was  still  in  flux,  and  the  canon  of  the 
Writings  was  scarcely  yet  in  sight,  although  most  of  the  books 
composing  those  two  canons  were  already  in  existence  very 
much  in  their  present  form.  The  Septuagint  translation  began, 
as  is  evident,  with  the  Law,  which  is  supposed  to  have  been 
translated  by  learned  Greek-speaking  Jews  of  Alexandria  for 
the  great  library  founded  by  the  Ptolemies,  somewhere  in  the 
first  half  of  the  third  century  B.C.  The  remaining  books  of 
the  Old  Testament,  together  with  some  other  sacred  Hterature, 
which,  although  it  won  high  approval,  at  least  for  a  time,  was 
never  adopted  into  the  stricter  canon  of  the  Jews  of  Palestine, 
were  translated  from  time  to  time  to  be  added  to  the  same 
royal  library,  the  translation  of  the  entire  Septuagint  Old  Testa- 
ment occupying  in  all  probability  more  than  a  hundred  years. 

We  have  seen  how,  in  the  Palestinian  canon,  the  Bible  grew 


THE   ENGLISH    BIBLE  9 

by  a  process  of  accretion,  in  such  manner  that  the  books  of 
the  Bible  outside  of  the  Law  were  arranged  in  general  in  the 
order  of  their  composition.  A  very  different  plan  was  pursued 
by  the  Alexandrian  Jews,  who  used  as  their  Bible  the  transla- 
tions into  Greek  made  for  the  library  of  the  Ptolemies,  in- 
cluding that  considerable  mass  of  material  which  we  ordinarily 
designate  as  Apocrypha.  Influenced  by  contact  with  the 
logical  and  critical -minded  Greeks,  they  sought  to  arrange 
these  books  according  to  some  scientific  and  critical  method, 
as  men  counted  scientific  and  critical  in  those  days.  The 
Law  was  treated  as  a  whole,  and  left  untouched,  so  far  as 
the  arrangement  of  the  books  was  concerned,  but  the  books 
were  furnished  with  new  titles,  descriptive  of  their  contents, 
and  the  supposed  authorship  was  noted  in  the  further  titles 
— first,  second,  etc.,  book  of  Moses. 

The  Prophets  and  Writings  were  combined  and  rearranged 
in  what  was  regarded  as  a  rational  manner.  The  method 
adopted  was  in  general  this  :  Those  books  which  were  regarded 
as  historical  were  placed  first  in  what  was  supposed  to  be  their 
chronological  order,  so  as  to  give  a  continuous  history  of  the 
Jews.  After  these  followed  the  non-historical  books,  arranged 
partly  according  to  their  subjects,  partly  according  to  the  dates 
of  their  supposed  authors.  It  ought  to  be  said,  however,  that, 
so  far  as  we  know,  no  arrangement  achieved  such  general 
agreement  as  to  be  accepted  in  all  its  details.  The  famous 
Vatican  Codex,  known  as  B,  which  is  regarded  as  representing 
the  best  text,  has  this  arrangement  of  the  books  :  From  Genesis 
to  Second  Esdras,  which  latter  includes,  along  with  much  that 
we  count  apocryphal,  our  Book  of  Nehemiah,  are  in  the 
order  to  which  we  are  accustomed  in  the  English  Bibles ;  then 
follow  Psalms,  Proverbs,  Ecclesiastes,  Canticles,  Job,  Wisdom 
of  Solomon,  Wisdom  of  the  son  of  Sirach,  Esther,  Judith, 
Tobit,  the  Minor  Prophets,  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  Baruch,  Lamenta- 
tions, Epistle  of  Jeremiah,  Ezekiel,  and  Daniel.  The  Codex 
Alexandrinus,  in  the  British  Museum,  arranges  the  books  in 
three  volumes,  as  follows  :  In  the  first  volume  Genesis  to 
Chronicles  inclusive,  in  the  order  to  which  we  are  accustomed 


lo  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

in  our  English  Bibles.  In  the  second  volume  the  Minor 
Prophets,  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  Baruch,  Lamentations,  the  Epistle 
of  Jeremiah,  Ezekiel,  Daniel,  Esther,  Tobit,  Judith,  First  and 
Second  Esdras,  and  the  four  books  of  the  Maccabees.  The 
third  volume  contains  the  Psalter,  together  with  the  canticles 
used  in  the  services  of  the  Church — such  as  Exodus  xv.,  the 
Magnificat,  etc. — Job,  Proverbs,  Ecclesiastes,  Song  of  Solomon, 
Wisdom  of  Solomon,  and  Wisdom  of  the  son  of  Sirach.  The 
Psalter  of  Solomon  is  added  after  the  New  Testament  at  the 
end  of  the  fourth  volume.  But  these  are  not  the  only  arrange- 
ments of  the  books  of  the  Old  Testament  which  we  can  trace 
to  the  scholars  of  the  Alexandrian  school.  Another  arrange- 
ment, which  is  represented  by  Tischendorf,  in  his  edition  of 
the  Septuagint,  is  as  follows :  Pentateuch,  Joshua,  Judges, 
Ruth,  four  books  of  Kings  (two  of  them  being  what  we  know 
as  First  and  Second  Samuel),  two  books  of  Chronicles,  two 
books  of  Esdras  (the  second  including  our  Nehemiah),  Tobit, 
Judith,  Esther,  in  which,  as  it  is  found  in  the  Septuagint,  there 
is  a  considerable  portion  which  we  count  apocryphal.  At  this 
point  end  the  books  counted  as  historical.  Then  follow  Job, 
supposed  to  have  been  written  by  Moses ;  Psalms,  ascribed 
to  David;  Proverbs,  Ecclesiastes,  Canticles,  and  Wisdom  of 
Solomon,  supposed  to  have  been  written  by  Solomon ;  Ecclesi- 
asticus,  placed  immediately  after  the  writings  of  Solomon,  not 
because  of  its  antiquity,  but  because  of  the  similarity  of  style 
and  subject;  the  twelve  Minor  Prophets,  the  date  of  the  earliest 
of  which  was  earlier  than  the  date  of  Isaiah  ;  Isaiah  ;  Jeremiah ; 
Lamentations,  called  in  the  Septuagint  Lamentations  of  Jere- 
rniah,  and  attributed  to  that  prophet  as  their  author ;  the  Epistle 
of  Jeremiah ;  Ezekiel ;  Daniel,  including  of  course  the  apocry- 
phal portions  ;  and  the  books  of  the  Maccabees,  which  seem  to 
have  received  their  position  apart  from  all  the  other  historical 
books  at  the  close  of  the  entire  canon  on  account  of  their  late 
date.  Another  interesting  and  curious  arrangement,  which  grew 
out  of  the  methods  of  the  Alexandrian  school,  is  found  in  the 
Syriac  Bible,  viz.  Pentateuch,  Job,  as  written  by  Moses,  Joshua, 
Judges,  Samuel,  Kings,  Chronicles,  Psalms,  Proverbs,  Ecclesi- 


THE   ENGLISH   BIBLE  n 

astes,  Ruth,  Canticles,  Esther,  Ezra,  Nehemiah,  Isaiah,  the  twelve 
Minor  Prophets,  Jeremiah,  Lamentations,  Ezekiel,  Daniel. 

All  these  various  arrangements  are  meant,  as  will  be  seen,  to 
be  scientific,  as  over  against  the  haphazard  chronological  order 
of  the  Hebrew.  In  certain  points,  also,  all  agree,  as  for  instance 
in  the  arrangement  of  a  section  of  historical  books  in  such  a 
manner  as  to  carry  the  history  of  the  Jews  along  in  an  orderly 
manner.  But  that  I  may  not  become  tedious,  I  pass  on  to  an 
arrangement  adopted  or  adapted  from  the  Alexandrian  schools, 
which  we  find  in  the  Latin  Vulgate,  and  which  is  of  especial 
interest  to  us  and  deserving  of  special  study,  because  it  is  the 
arrangement  adopted  by  the  translators  of  the  English  Bible. 
This  arrangement,  as  we  find  it  in  the  Vulgate,  is  as  follows : 
Pentateuch,  Joshua,  Judges,  Ruth,  the  four  books  of  Kings, 
Chronicles,  four  books  of  Esdras,  the  second  of  which  is  our 
Book  of  Nehemiah,  Tobit,  Judith,  Esther.  Here  ended  the 
historical  section.  The  remaining  books  were  arranged  in  the 
supposed  order  of  their  composition :  Job,  supposed  to  have 
been  written  by  Moses,  the  Psalter,  ascribed  to  David,  Proverbs, 
Ecclesiastes,  Song  of  Songs  and  Wisdom  of  Solomon,  attri- 
buted to  Solomon,  Ecclesiasticus,  placed  here  because  of  the 
similarity  of  its  subject  and  treatment  to  the  books  immediately 
preceding,  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  Lamentations,  Baruch,  Ezekiel, 
Daniel,  and  the  twelve  Minor  Prophets  in  the  usual  order, 
which  is  that  of  the  Hebrew,  and  which  remained  unchanged 
in  the  Greek  translations,  because  the  Twelve  were  considered 
as  comprising  together  one  book,  and  were  therefore  treated 
as  inseparable.  The  three  books  of  the  Maccabees  were 
placed  at  the  end  of  the  whole  collection  and  not  after  the 
historical  books,  to  which  they  would  seem  naturally  to  have 
belonged,  because  the  consciousness  of  their  late  date  was 
still  strong.  It  will  be  observed  that  the  Latin  Vulgate 
followed  the  Alexandrian  school,  not  only  in  arranging  the 
books  in  a  critical  and  scientific  manner,  but  also  in  adopting 
into  the  canon  a  considerable  number  of  books  which  were 
not  found  in  the  canon  of  the  Palestinian  Jews. 

It  is,  as  already  stated,  the  arrangement  of  the  Latin  Vulgate 


12  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

which  was  adopted  by  our  translators,  and  has  now  become  to 
the  mass  of  our  people  part  of  the  Bible  itself.  For,  while  at 
the  time  of  the  Reformation  a  sharp  distinction  was  drawn 
between  those  books  which  were  to  be  found  in  the  original 
Hebrew  and  those  which  existed  only  in  the  Greek  transla- 
tions, the  Hebrew  being  appealed  to  as  the  original  Old 
Testament,  the  order  of  arrangement  of  the  Latin  Bible  was 
accepted  practically  without  question  both  by  the  continental 
reformers  and  by  the  English.  Those  books  and  portions  of 
books  which  were  not  to  be  found  in  the  original  Hebrew 
were  culled  out  and  placed  by  themselves  as  the  Apocrypha, 
forming  in  our  Bibles  a  collection  intervening  between  the 
Old  and  the  New  Testaments,  but  further  than  this  no  attempt 
was  made  to  change  the  order  of  the  books  adopted  in  the 
Latin  Vulgate,  much  less  to  return  to  the  original  arrangement 
of  the  Hebrew  Bible.  It  should  be  noticed,  by  the  way,  that 
the  additions  to  the  canon  in  the  Alexandrian  school  belong 
entirely  to  that  section  of  the  canon  which  in  Hebrew  was 
known  as  the  Writings.  To  several  of  the  books  of  this  canon, 
notably  Esther  and  Daniel,  large  sections  were  added  which 
are  not  to  be  found  in  the  Hebrew.  Besides  this,  entire 
books  were  added,  such  as  Tobit  and  Judith,  which,  like 
Esther,  naturally  belong  to  the  canon  known  to  the  Hebrews 
as  the  Writings.  On  the  other  hand,  it  should  be  noticed  that 
the  Prophets,  particularly  Jeremiah,  are  shorter  in  the  Greek 
translation  than  in  the  Hebrew,  a  fact  which  bears  upon  the 
date  of  the  composition  of  the  canon  of  the  Prophets. 

The  English  Bible,  then,  is  a  translation  of  the  original 
Hebrew  grafted  upon  the  form  of  the  Latin  Vulgate.  It  is, 
in  other  words,  neither  a  translation  of  the  original  Hebrew, 
nor  of  the  Latin  Vulgate,  but  a  compromise  between  the  two. 
It  has  taken  its  words,  with  some  exceptions,  from  the  one, 
and  its  arrangement  of  the  books  and  doctrine  about  those 
books  from  the  other.  The  English  Bible  has  distinctly  in- 
corporated into  itself,  as  though  they  were  part  of  the  inspired 
record,  the  critical  theories  regarding  the  date  and  authorship 
of  the   books   which   were   meant   to   be    expressed    in    the 


THE    ENGLISH    BIBLE  13 

arrangement  of  the  Latin  Vulgate,  the  result  of  the  higher 
criticism  of  the  Alexandrian  schools.  Further  than  this,  it 
has  adopted  certain  titles  of  books,  also  intended  to  express 
critical  views.  We  have  seen  that  the  Hebrew  Bible  designated 
the  first  five  books  of  the  Old  Testament  as  the  Law,  regard- 
ing the  five  as  one,  and  designating  each  of  the  five  sections 
merely  by  the  first  word  of  that  section.  Alexandrian  scholars 
gave  to  the  Law  the  title  of  Pentateuch,  or  "five  parts," 
and  to  each  part  a  Greek  name,  setting  it  apart  as  a  separate 
book,  namely,  Genesis,  Exodus,  Leviticus,  Numbers,  and 
Deuteronomy.  The  Jewish  tradition  regarding  the  authorship 
of  these  books,  that  they  were  written  by  Moses,  which  had, 
however,  in  the  stricter  Palestinian  treatment  of  the  Bible 
been  treated  as  tradition  and  not  permitted  to  invade  the 
sacredly  guarded  realm  of  the  text,  became  in  the  Alexandrian 
schools  an  inherent  part  of  the  books  themselves,  so  that  they 
were  designated  as  the  first,  second,  third,  fourth,  and  fifth 
books  of  Moses,  and  these  titles  were  adopted  into  the  Vulgate. 
The  same  titles  and  the  same  statement  of  authorship  are 
embodied  with  the  books  in  our  English  translations,  although 
not  found  in  the  original  Hebrew  from  which  our  English 
Bibles  profess  to  be  translated.  Similarly  the  Song  of  Songs 
received  the  title  Song  of  Solomon,  which  is  not  in  the  original 
Hebrew.  In  other  words,  in  these  regards,  as  in  the  question 
of  the  arrangement  of  the  books  of  the  Old  Testament,  the 
higher  criticism  of  the  ancient  Alexandrian  schools  has  actually 
been  incorporated  in  the  text  of  the  Bible  of  English-speaking 
Christians.  It  is  a  curious  illustration  of  the  manner  in  which 
the  liberalism  and  even  free-thinking  of  one  age  become  the 
stiffest  orthodoxy  of  some  succeeding  age. 

It  is  not  my  intention  to  discuss  the  unfortunate  results 
which  have  flowed  from  this  confusion  of  critical  views  with 
the  actual  text  of  the  Bible.  The  same  sort  of  thing  was  done 
when  Archbishop  Usher's  chronology  was  printed  as  a  part  of 
the  Bible  at  the  head  of  the  pages.  Every  one  is  familiar 
with  the  mental  confusion  which  resulted  from  this  well-meant 
attempt  to  elucidate  the  Bible,  and  you  will  still  find  godly 


14  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

and  pious  people,  who  ought  to  know  better,  telling  you  that 
the  world  was  created  4,004  years  before  Christ,  and  appealing 
to  their  Bible  in  confirmation  of  the  statement,  quite  unaware 
that  their  authority  is  in  reality  not  the  Bible,  but  Archbishop 
Usher's  interpretation  of  the  Bible.  A  similar  result  followed 
the  attempt  to  make  the  Song  of  Solomon  intelligible  by  pre- 
fixing interpretations  to  the  chapters.  People  accepted  these 
as  authoritative  portions  of  the  Bible,  and  resented  any  other 
interpretation  as  heresy,  because  it  was  against  the  Word  of 
God.  The  same  result  precisely  has  flowed  from  the  attempt 
to  teach  doctrine  about  the  books  of  the  Bible  by  changing 
their  order  and  prefixing  headings  not  found  in  the  original. 
It  was  done  in  good  faith,  with  the  honest  intent  to  assist  the 
understanding  of  the  sacred  book,  and  it  represented  the  best 
scholarship  of  the  day.  It  worked  well  as  long  as  that  scholar- 
ship held  its  own,  just  as  Archbishop  Usher's  dates  did,  but 
the  day  came  when  that  scholarship  was  superseded,  and  the 
scholars  have  found  themselves  ever  since  in  conflict  with 
the  mass  of  the  plain  readers  of  the  Bible,  who  naturally, 
not  being  able  to  refer  to  the  original,  do  not  distinguish 
between  what  is  actually  Bible  and  what  has  been  put  in  by 
the  critics  of  an  earlier  period  in  order  to  make  the  Bible 
more  intelligible.  It  is  all  one  more  illustration  of  the  fact 
that  the  Bible  outlasts  the  traditions  and  the  critical  views  of 
all  generations. 

We  should  emancipate  the  Bible  from  the  dates  of  Arch- 
bishop Usher,  from  mystical  interpretations  woven  into  the 
text  in  the  form  of  chapter  headings,  and  from  the  critical 
views  of  Alexandrian  scholars  or  Jewish  scribes  regarding  the 
date  and  authorship  of  books  as  represented  in  the  arrange- 
ment or  headings  of  those  books.  Such  views  may  be  right 
or  they  may  be  wrong;  that  does  not  affect  the  question. 
They  should  not  be  incorporated  in  the  text  of  the  Bible.  If 
they  had  not  been  so  incorporated,  if  the  text  of  the  Bible 
had  not  been  tampered  with,  albeit  with  the  best  and  most 
innocent  of  motives,  it  is  probable  that  some  of  those  ques- 
tions which   now  distress  many  Christians  would   not   have 


THE   ENGLISH    BIBLE  15 

come  to  the  front  at  all,  certainly  not  in  the  present  aggravated 
shape. 

How,  then,  should  we  arrange  the  books  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment ?  Two  ways  are  possible.  The  one  is  to  endeavour  to 
arrange  the  Bible  as  much  as  possible  like  a  modern  book, 
making  it  intelligible  by  all  the  devices  with  which  we  are 
acquainted.  This  would  almost  necessarily  involve  the  placing 
of  dates  on  the  pages,  the  arrangement  of  the  books  according 
to  their  natural  and  scientific  order,  the  putting  of  notices  of 
authorship  and  date  at  the  beginning  of  the  books,  and  the 
prefixing  to  chapters  or  sections  of  explanatory  headings.  This 
I  hold  to  be  a  desirable  and  legitimate  method  of  editing  the 
Bible,  provided  always  it  be  made  clear  that  dates,  headings, 
etc.,  are  not  component  parts  of  the  Bible  itself,  of  equal 
authority  with  the  text.  To  avoid  this  I  hold  it  better  for  the 
official  or  standard  Bible  to  pursue  the  second  method,  which 
is  to  print  just  what  is  found  in  the  original  without  comment 
and  without  rearrangement.  Inasmuch  as  we  claim  in  all  our 
translations  to  recognise  the  Hebrew  Old  Testament  as  the 
original,  the  Hebrew  Old  Testament  translated  as  it  stands 
should  be  put  into  the  hands  of  our  people  as  the  official 
standard  Old  Testament,  and  not  the  Old  Testament  modified 
by  the  critical  theories  of  the  Alexandrian  schools,  which  is 
what  we  now  have. 

The  King  James  translation  was  a  great  improvement  on 
the  earlier  English  translations  which  preceded  it.  The  Canter- 
bury Revision  was  in  its  turn  an  improvement  on  the  King 
James  version,  and  has  brought  us  still  nearer  to  the  original 
Hebrew.  In  this  Revision  the  mediaeval  chapter  divisions 
have  been  relegated  to  the  margin,  and  the  verse  divisions 
also,  so  that  to  read  the  Revised  Version  is  not  quite  so  much 
like  reading  a  dictionary  consecutively,  as  the  reading  of  the 
standard  King  James  version  always  has  been.  In  other 
respects  also,  such  as  the  heading  "  Song  of  Songs  "  instead  of 
"Song  of  Solomon,"  the  division  of  the  Psalter  into  five  books, 
and  the  recognition  of  poetry  as  poetry,  translation  from  the 
Hebrew  has  taken  the  place  of  the  former  translation  from 


i6  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

the  Vulgate.  But  the  revisers  were  on  the  whole  very  timid 
and  conventional,  and  a  great  part  of  the  objectionable  depar- 
ture's from  the  original  in  favour  of  the  Latin  Vulgate  contained 
in  the  King  James  still  remain  in  the  Canterbury  Revision. 
So  in  famous  doctrinal  passages,  like  Isaiah  vii.  14,  the  revisers 
still  adhere  to  the  Latin  translation,  in  the  face  in  this  case  of 
both  the  Greek  and  the  Hebrew.  The  same  timidity  and 
dread  of  change  shows  itself  in  their  treatment  of  the  Penta- 
teuch headings  and  the  arrangement  of  the  books.  They 
profess  to  translate  from  the  Hebrew,  but  in  these  regards 
they  have  been  false  to  their  professions,  innocently  but  un- 
fortunately incorporating  with  their  Hebrew  text  the  doctrines 
of  the  Latin  Vulgate  and  the  critical  schools  of  ancient 
Alexandria.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  in  the  not  far  distant 
future  we  shall  have  an  English  translation  that  will  conform 
in  these  points  also  to  the  Hebrew  original.  Such  a  translation 
would  be  an  immense  gain. 

But  I  should  not  wish  to  be  understood  as  depreciating  the 
work  of  the  Alexandrian  scholars.  They  did  a  valuable  work, 
and  we  are  peculiarly  indebted  to  them  for  rescuing  for  us  the 
books  called  apocryphal,  which  I  would  like  to  see  bound  up 
in  all  Bibles  between  the  Old  and  the  New  Testaments,  and 
read  by  all  men.  My  objection  is  not  to  the  scholarship  of 
the  Alexandrian  scholars,  which  was  admirable  for  their  age 
and  of  great  service  to  the  Church,  both  Jewish  and  Christian. 
That  to  which  I  object  is  the  incorporation  of  the  views  of 
those  uninspired  men  with  the  text  of  the  Bible  in  a  manner 
which  is  exceedingly  misleading  to  the  great  mass  of  Bible 
readers.  I  wish  to  see  the  Old  Testament  placed  in  the 
hands  of  the  Church  as  it  existed  among  the  Hebrews,  with 
the  interesting  and  valuable  tide-marks  of  its  growth  upon  it, 
and  not  as  re-made  according  to  the  views  of  the  higher  critics 
who  lived  in  Alexandria  about  two  thousand  years  ago. 

IL    THE   NEW   TESTAMENT 

Turning  to  the  New  Testament,  we  find  in  our  English 
Bible  this  arrangement :  First,  four  Gospels,  then  the  book  of 


THE    ENGLISH    BIBLE  17 

the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  then  nine  Epistles  from  St.  Paul 
to  various  churches,  then  four  Epistles  from  him  to  individuals, 
then  an  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  ascribed  to  him,  then  seven 
general  Epistles  ascribed  to  James,  Peter,  John,  and  Jude,  and 
then,  last  of  all,  the  Revelation  of  St.  John  the  Divine.  Why 
are  these  books  arranged  in  that  order?  Is  it  mere  chance, 
or  has  it  some  significance  ?  and  if  so,  what  ? 

If  you  turn  to  the  Epistles  ascribed  to  St.  Paul,  you  will 
note  that  the  Epistles  to  churches  or  communities  of  Christians, 
with  the  exception  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  are  placed 
together  first.  Examining  these  you  will  find  that  they  are 
not  arranged  according  to  subject  or  date,  but,  odd  as  such  a 
system  seems  to  us,  according  to  their  size.  Chronologically 
and  according  to  topics,  the  present  arrangement  should  be 
quite  revolutionised,  as  anyone  will  have  perceived  who  has 
ever  undertaken  to  make  even  the  most  rudimentary  study  of 
the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul.  The  Epistles  to  the  Thessalonians, 
which  now  stand  at  the  end  of  this  group,  should  probably 
stand  first ;  then  the  Corinthians,  the  Galatians,  the  Romans, 
the  Philippians,  the  Ephesians,  the  Colossians.  But  if  these 
Epistles  to  churches  and  communities  of  Christians  are  arranged 
according  to  size,  how  is  it  that  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  y' 
which  is  one  of  the  larger  Epistles,  stands,  not  only  after  the 
other  Epistles  to  communities,  but  even  after  all  the  Epistles 
to  individuals  ?  This  arrangement  reflects  the  doubt  existing 
regarding  this  Epistle  from  the  beginning  until  now.  The 
best  critics  of  the  present  day  do  not  believe  that  it  was 
written  by  St.  Paul,  in  which  they  agree  with  the  critics  of  the 
early  Church  and  of  the  Reformation  period.  The  position  of 
the  book  in  our  Bibles  reflects  the  belief  that  it  was  not 
written  by  St.  Paul,  and  therefore  has  no  title  to  be  placed 
among  the  Epistles  written  by  him.  But  indeed  the  criticism 
of  the  early  Church— and  it  was  the  West  which  particularly 
objected  to  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews— went  even  farther 
than  this ;  the  inspired  character  of  the  book  was  for  a  long 
time  freely  doubted,  so  that  it  was  one  of  the  last  books  to  be 
admitted  in  the  canon  of  the  Western  Church.     The  ground 


i8  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

of  doubt  was  the  question  of  authorship,  for  in  early  times  the 
general  opinion  seems  to  have  been  that  no  book  not  written 
by  an  apostle,  or  under  the  immediate  direction  of  an  apostle, 
should  be  admitted  to  the  canon  of  Holy  Scripture. 

A  similar  question  was  raised  regarding  the  authorship 
of  Second  Peter  and  Second  and  Third  John,  and  these, 
together  with  the  Epistles  of  James  and  Jude,  which  were  not 
written  by  apostles,  were  rejected  altogether  by  some  churches, 
and  slowly  accepted  by  others.  It  was,  apparently,  this 
question  with  regard  to  the  canonicity  of  five  out  of  seven 
of  the  Catholic  Epistles  which  caused  all  these  letters  to  be 
placed  toward  the  end  of  the  book,  in  the  canon  of  the 
Western  Church,  after  all  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul,  and  even 
after  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews.  A  similar,  but  still  more 
pronounced  and  long-continued  doubt  with  regard  to  the 
authenticity  of  the  Revelation  of  St.  John  the  Divine,  resulted 
ill  the  present  position  of  that  book  at  the  close  of  the  whole 
canon. 

In  a  general  way,  then,  the  arrangement  of  the  books  of  the 
New  Testament  in  our  English  Bibles  represents  the  growth  of 
the  canon.  The  first  canon  to  be  adopted  was  the  four  Gospels, 
probably  in  the  order  in  which  they  now  stand.  These  were 
universally  adopted,  for  while  there  were  other  gospels  that 
were  regarded  as  inspired  by  individual  churches  or  by  some  of 
the  fathers,  these  four  only  had  from  the  outset  the  suffrages 
of  all.  About  them  there  was  never  any  dispute.  The  Acts 
of  the  Apostles  and  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul,  both  those  to  the 
churches  and  those  to  individuals,  were  likewise  accepted  by 
•all  from  a  very  early  period.  These  writings,  together  with  the 
First  Epistle  of  St.  Peter  and  the  First  Epistle  of  St.  John, 
were  the  writings  of  the  New  Testament  which  were  received 
practically  from  the  outset  by  all  everywhere;  the  remaining 
writings  of  the  New  Testament  were  long  in  dispute. 

The  latter  half  of  the  fourth  century  after  Christ  is  the  time 
which  students  of  the  canon  fix  as  the  date  at  which  for  prac- 
tical purposes  the  canon  of  the  New  Testament  may  be  said  to 
have  become  fixed  ;  but  that  does  not  mean  that  in  that  day 


THE   ENGLISH    BIBLE  19 

the  same  hard  and  fast  lines  of  canonicity  were  drawn  as  at 
present.  Indeed,  for  a  couple  of  centuries  after  this  the  Greek 
churches  rejected  the  Revelation  of  St.  John  the  Divine,  and 
the  Syrian  churches  not  only  the  Revelation,  but  also  the  Epistles 
of  St.  Jude,  Second  Peter,  and  Second  and  Third  John,  while 
individuals  everywhere  held  many  divergent  views  regarding 
individual  books.  The  early  Christians  seem  to  have  made 
freer  with  the  Bible  in  many  ways  than  we  of  the  present  day.  ^. 
Even  as  late  as  the  middle  of  the  sixth  century  Junihus,  an 
orthodox  African  bishop,  marks  the  Apocalypse,  and  the 
Epistles  of  James,  Jude,  Second  Peter,  and  Second  and  Third 
John  as  books  of  doubtful  authority. 

The  early  reformers  also  showed  a  tendency  towards  a  treat- 
ment of  the  Bible  which  goes  beyond  anything  which  we  are 
ready  to  accept  as  admissible;  and  especially  is  this  true  of 
Luther.      If  you  turn  to  a  German  Bible  you  will  find  an 
arrangement  of  the  books  of  the  New  Testament  which  differs 
from  our  arrangement  in  this  way  :  The  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews, 
and  the  Epistles  of  SS.  James  and  Jude  are  taken  out  of  their 
regular  position  and  placed  together  after  the  Third  Epistle  and 
before  the  Revelation  of  St.  John.     In  the  original  Lutheran 
Bibles  a  gap  between  the  Third  Epistle  of  St.  John  and  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  further  emphasised  the  meaning  of  this 
arrangement,  which  was  thus  explained  by  Luther  in  the  Intro- 
duction to  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews :  "  Thus  far  we  have 
had  before  us  the  well-established  and  main  books  of  the  New 
Testament.     The  four  which  here  follow  have  long  since  held 
a  lower  rank."     Of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  he  further  said  : 
"  There  is  a  mixture  in  it  of  wood,  hay,  stubble,  and  it  cannot 
be  ranked  side  by  side  with  the  ApostoHc  Epistles."     Of  the 
Epistle  of  St.  Jude  he  says  that  the  ancient  Church  rejected  it 
because  the  writer  was  not  an  apostle,  and  because  he  appealed 
to  proverbs  and  stories  not  to  be  found  in  Holy  Scripture.     Of 
the  Epistle  of  St.  James  he  speaks  vehemently  as  "  an  epistle  ^ 
of  straw,  which  has  nothing  of  the  Bible  in  it."     With  regard 
to  the  Revelation  of  St.  John,  he  says  that  it  is  not  inspired  by 
the  Holy  Ghost,  his  reasons  for  denying  its  inspiration  being 


20  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

because  it  is  pervaded  "  through  and  through  with  visions  and 
images,  and  does  not  prophesy  with  clear,  plain  words,  like 
Paul  and  Peter  and  Christ  Himself;  because  Christ  is  neither 
taught  nor  known  in  the  book,  and  we  should  keep  to  the 
books  wherein  Christ  is  clearly  and  simply  set  before  us." 
Some  of  the  later  Lutheran  fathers  added  to  these  four  books 
Second  Peter  and  Second  and  Third  John,  regarding  the  whole 
seven  as  constituting  an  apocrypha  to  the  New  Testament, 
useful  for  reading  and  edification,  but  not  to  be  admitted  as 
standards  of  Christian  doctrine.  Zwingli  held  a  somewhat 
similar  position,  rejecting  the  Apocalypse  absolutely,  and 
claiming  that  those  books  which  were  not  universally  received 
in  the  early  Church  were  not  to  be  regarded  as  authoritative  in 
matters  of  faith,  which  is,  indeed,  the  statement  of  our  own 
Articles  of  Religion.  We  have  no  need,  however,  of  accepting 
the  opinion  of  Luther  or  Zwingli  regarding  the  books  at  some 
lime  doubted  by  the  Church.  Nor  need  we  follow  the  rule 
that  only  a  book  written  by  an  apostle,  or  under  the  immediate 
direction  of  an  apostle,  is  to  be  admitted  into  the  full  canon. 
We  receive  the  books  rather  because  of  their  contents  than 
their  authors  ;  and  the  fact  that  there  is  now  such  a  long  period 
during  which  there  has  been  a  practical  unanimity  with  regard 
to  all  the  books  contained  in  our  present  canon  of  the  New 
Testament  will  justify  us  in  asserting  that  the  doctrine  of  the 
Catholic  Church  is  that  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  the 
Epistles  of  James  and  Jude,  Second  Peter,  Second  and  Third 
John,  and  the  Revelation  of  St.  John,  are  all  inspired  of  the 
Holy  Ghost  and  do  properly  belong  to  the  canon  of  the  in- 
spired books  of  the  New  Testament. 

I  have  alluded  to  the  fact  of  a  difference  between  the 
arrangement  of  the  books  in  the  Greek  and  in  the  Latin 
canons.  I  oaght  to  add  that  the  Latin  canon  is  a  well-fixed 
and  definite  quantity,  while  among  the  Greek  churches  there 
was  considerable  diversity.  This  is  represented  in  the  diversity 
of  arrangement  in  the  Greek  manuscripts  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment. The  best  known  of  these  arrangements  is  that  of  the 
Alexandrian  Church.     Now  the  Alexandrian  Church,  in  both 


THE   ENGLISH   BIBLE  21 

the  New  and  Old  Testament  canons,  shows  a  tendency  to 
take  in  the  greatest  possible  number  of  books,  differing  in 
this  quite  distinctly  from  the  Greek  churches  in  Palestine, 
Asia  Minor,  and  elsewhere.  Tischendorf's  edition  of  the 
Greek  New  Testament,  which  reflects  the  Alexandrian  arrange- 
ment, orders  the  books  thus:  Four  Gospels,  Acts,  Catholic 
Epistles  (James,  First  and  Second  Peter,  First,  Second,  and 
Third  John,  Jude),  Epistles  of  St.  Paul  to  the  churches, 
Hebrews,  Epistles  to  individuals,  and  Apocalypse.  This 
arrangement  reflects  the  scientific  or  would-be  scientific 
character  of  Alexandrian  Bible  scholars.  They  were  in  their 
way  the  "  higher  critics  "  of  the  early  Church.  They  were  not 
content  to  have  the  books  of  the  New  Testament  arranged 
according  to  the  order  in  which  they  were  adopted,  which 
is  practically  the  plan  pursued  in  the  Latin  arrangement  and, 
following  that,  in  our  English  translations  of  the  Bible,  but 
sought  to  adopt  a  scientific  scheme  which  should  exhibit  the 
relation  of  the  books  to  one  another,  their  authorship,  etc. 
Accordingly,  accepting  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  as  Pauline, 
they  incorporated  it  among  the  Pauline  Epistles  and  placed 
it  along  with  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul  to  the  churches.  (There 
are  even  indications  that  it  was  sometimes  placed  in  Alex- 
andrian manuscripts  after  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians.) 
Similarly  the  Catholic  Epistles  received  a  position  directly 
after  the  Acts,  on  the  theory  that  they  antedate  the  Pauline 
Epistles,  and  therefore,  for  purposes  of  reading  and  study, 
should  precede  those  Epistles. 

In  making  a  scientific  arrangement  of  the  books  of  the 
New  Testament  at  the  present  day,  we  should  scarcely  be 
willing  to  accept  this  Alexandrian  arrangement ;  for  the  higher 
criticism  of  the  present  day,  while  having  in  view  the  same 
object  as  that  of  the  old  Alexandrian  scholars,  to  understand 
the  Bible  better  and  make  it  more  intelligible  to  the  world, 
has  learned  much  which  they  did  not  know.  If  we  must 
choose  between  the  Vulgate  arrangement  and  that  of  the 
Alexandrian  critics,  probably  the  former  is  to  be  preferred, 
since  it  gives  us  in  a  manner  the  history  of  the  growth  of  the 


22  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

canon.  But  it  should  be  understood  that  the  arrangement 
of  the  books  of  the  New  Testament  is  not  a  part  of  the 
inspired  record,  and  no  particular  arrangement  can  be  regarded 
as  obligatory  on  any  Church.  Why  should  we  not,  therefore, 
have  for  the  purposes  of  our  ordinary  use  an  arrangement 
which  shall,  as  far  as  possible,  help  to  make  the  books  in- 
telligible? Why  did  not  the  Canterbury  Revisers  attempt 
something  of  this  sort  ?  Those  good,  and  in  many  cases  wise 
men,  were  very  curious  combinations  of  thorough  scholarship 
and  timid  adherence  to  what  had  been,  because  it  had  been. 
They  did  away  with  the  dictionary  plan  of  printing  the  Bible, 
which  is  a  serious  hindrance  to  its  intelligent  reading,  substi- 
tuting the  principle  of  paragraph  divisions  according  to  the 
sense,  for  the  old  method  of  division  into  verses  on  no 
principles  of  sense,  but  for  convenience  of  reference  of  scribes. 
Now  if  they  could  venture  to  use  common  sense  in  such  a 
rr.atter  as  this,  why  did  they  feel  it  necessary  to  continue  to 
arrange  St.  Paul's  Epistles  according  to  size?  Is  there  any 
special  virtue  in  such  an  arrangement  ?  Was  the  scribe  who 
first  fixed  them  in  that  order  an  inspired  man  ?  To  my  mind 
he  was  very  much  the  opposite,  and  there  is  no  reason  why 
we  should  perpetuate  such  confusion  for  all  time,  and  make 
common,  plain  people  think  that  it  is  inspired  because  it  is 
in  the  Bible.  The  special  object  of  a  translation  of  the  Bible 
for  ordinary  use  should  be  to  make  that  Bible  thoroughly 
plain  to  the  people.  I  should  be  very  sorry  to  see  the 
Canterbury  revision  accepted  as  it  stands,  as  the  Bible  of  the 
Church,  not  because  it  is  not  a  great  improvement  on  the 
.King  James  version,  for  it  is  that,  but  because  to  adopt  it  now 
would  be  to  stereotype  a  considerable  number  of  sins,  not 
merely  against  scholarship,  but  against  common  sense,  by 
which  the  rei\ding  and  understanding  of  the  Bible  would  be 
hindered  for  a  long  time  to  come.  It  is  better  to  keep  the 
matter  in  a  state  of  flux  until  we  can  get  something  better 
than  cither  the  King  James  or  the  Canterbury  translations. 

What  sort  of  an  arrangement  of  the  books  of  the  New 
Testament   would    best   serve   the   purpose   of   making    that 


THE   ENGLISH    BIBLE  23 

inspired  volume  most  intelligible  ?  I  have  made  special 
mention  of  the  Pauline  Epistles  because  the  present  arrange- 
ment of  those  Epistles  is  the  most  objectionable  part  of  the 
arrangement  of  the  whole  New  Testament.  Think  of 
arranging  a  series  of  letters  merely  according  to  their  size, 
without  any  reference  either  to  date  or  subject-matter !  The 
rearrangement  of  these  letters  in  general  according  to  their 
date  would  accomplish  the  end  desired.  Outside  of  this  the 
difficulties  to  be  overcome  are  somewhat  greater,  and  the 
limits  of  this  chapter  will  scarcely  permit  me  to  go  into  any 
detailed  explanations  and  suggestions. 

The  points  to  emphasise  are  these :  No  properly  prescribed 
order  of  arrangement  of  the  books  of  the  New  Testament 
has  come  down  to  us;  our  present  arrangement  is  that  of 
the  Latin  Church,  which,  while  historically  interesting  on 
account  of  its  testimony  concerning  the  growth  of  the  canon, 
is,  after  all,  a  sort  of  chance  concurrence  of  atoms,  priority 
in  order  depending  within  certain  limits  on  priority  of 
undisputed  admission  to  the  canon ;  the  arrangement  of  the 
Alexandrian  Church,  which  is  that  in  use  in  our  ordinary 
Greek  New  Testaments,  is  the  result  of  an  attempt  on  the 
part  of  the  Alexandrian  critics  to  arrange  the  books  of  the 
Bible  according  to  scientific  principles  which  we  no  longer 
recognise  as  scientific,  and  is  not,  therefore,  an  arrangement 
which  we  should  do  well  to  imitate;  the  arrangement  of 
Luther,  on  the  other  hand,  is  based  on  certain  private 
interpretations  of  that  great  man  which  we  should  scarcely 
be  prepared  to  accept  and  embalm  in  the  arrangement  of 
our  canon.  What  we  need  is  a  conservative,  common-sense 
arrangement,  which  shall  help  people  to  understand  what 
they  read,  and  which  shall  represent  what  is  generally 
admitted,  but  shall  not  attempt  under  the  guise  of  the  Bible 
to  foist  private  opinions  of  any  individuals  or  schools  on 
the  Church  with  authority.  It  ought  not  to  be  impossible 
to  make  such  an  arrangement  of  the  books  of  the  New 
Testament. 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  BIBLE,  THE  CHURCH,  AND  REASON 

ARTICLE  VI.  of  the  Articles  of  Religion  is  headed,  "Of 
the  Sufficiency  of  the  Holy  Scriptures  for  Salvation." 
The  body  of  the  Article  defines  this  sufficiency  thus :  *'  Holy 
Scripture  containeth  all  things  necessary  to  salvation :  so 
that  whatsoever  is  not  read  therein,  nor  may  be  proved 
thereby,  is  not  to  be  required  of  any  man,  that  it  should 
be  beheved  as  an  article  of  the  Faith,  or  be  thought  requisite 
or  necessary  to  salvation."  In  other  words,  the  object  of  the 
Article  is  to  confute  the  Roman  position,  which  placed  the 
unwritten  on  a  par  with  the  written  tradition  of  the  Church 
as  contained  in  Holy  Scripture,  exacting  as  a  condition  of 
salvation  belief  in  things  which  were  not  contained  in 
Holy  Scripture.  The  definition  is  exclusive  and  not 
inclusive.  It  excludes  from  the  things  necessary  to  be 
beheved  "whatsoever  is  not  read"  in  Holy  Scripture,  "nor 
may  be  proved  thereby,"  but  does  not  state  what  things 
contained  therein  must  be  beheved.  By  inference  this  is 
done  to  some  extent  in  the  eighth  Article,  "  Of  the  Creeds  " : 
"The  Nicene  Creed,  and  that  which  is  commonly  called 
the  Apostles'  Creed,  ought  thoroughly  to  be  received  and 
believed:  for  they  may  be  proved  by  most  certain  warrants 
of  Holy  Scripture."  And  yet  it  would  be  erroneous  to  say 
that  the  authors  of  these  Articles  intended  to  limit  belief  to 
the  statements  of  the  Creeds.  The  object  of  the  eighth  Article 
was  not  to  state  a  minimum  of  belief,  beyond  which  no  one 
was  bound  to  go,  but  to  assert  the  credibility  of  the  Creeds, 
because  they  have  "certain  warrants  of  Holy  Scripture." 
The   inspiration   and   the   credibility  of  Holy  Scripture   are 

24 


THE  BIBLE,  THE  CHURCH,  AND  REASON         25 

assumed  as  an  axiom,  as  a  foundation  on  which  everything 
else  must  rest.  Holy  Scripture  is  the  constitution  from 
which  all  propositions  derive  their  validity  and  by  which 
they  must  be  tested.  That  is  the  attitude  of  the  Articles 
of  Religion  toward  the  Bible. 

But  on  the  other  hand,  the  Articles  of  Religion,  while 
not  attempting  to  give  any  formal  definition  of  inspiration, 
evidently  do  not  regard  all  Scripture  as  of  equal  validity, 
nor  even  as  "an  infallible  rule  of  faith  and  practice."  The^ 
seventh  Article  distinctly  states,  in  the  form  of  a  conditional 
sentence,  as  something  recognised  by  all,  that  the  Law  was 
defective,  temporary,  and  fallible,  so  that  Christian  men  are 
no  longer  bound  by  the  ceremonies  and  rites  ordained  in 
that  law,  nor  need  the  civil  precepts  thereof  be  received 
in  any  community.  That  Article  closes  with  these  words : 
"Yet  notwithstanding,  no  Christian  man  whatsoever  is  free 
from  the  obedience  of  the  Commandments  which  are  called 
Moral."  In  other  words,  according  to  this  Article,  part  of 
the  Old  Testament  is  temporary  and  fallible,  and  part  is 
eternal  and  infallible.  There  are  two  elements  in  com- 
bination in  the  Old  Testament :  the  one  has  an  historical 
value ;  it  has  been  serviceable ;  it  has  been  of  use  in  bringing 
men  to  the  truth ;  but  it  is  outgrown  now — men  have  got 
beyond  it;  it  is  no  longer  true;  the  other  is  true  in  its 
very  nature — it  can  never  be  outgrown,  and  it  is  as  binding 
on  us  to-day  as  it  was  on  the  Hebrews  in  the  remotest 
antiquity.  According  to  the  doctrine  not  only  of  our  own 
Church,  but  substantially  of  all  Christians,  the  ceremonial 
and  ritual  law  of  the  Old  Testament  has  no  more  validity 
for  us  than  the  ceremonial  and  ritual  laws  of  the  Phoenicians, 
and  the  civil  precepts  of  the  Hebrew  codes  are  no  more 
binding  upon  us  than  the  laws  of  Solon.  The  reason 
assigned  for  this  in  the  Articles  of  Religion  is,  as  shown 
by  the  last  clause  of  the  seventh  Article,  that  they  are  not 
moral  in  their  character.  That  which  is  essentially  true, 
and  therefore  binding  at  all  times  on  all  men  of  all  nations, 
is  "the  Commandments  which  are  called  Moral." 


26  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

But  what  are  these  moral  commandments,  and  on  what 
principles  are  they  to  be  determined  ?  Are  they  moral  be- 
cause of  the  external  authority  by  which  they  are  ordained, 
or  are  they  moral  because  of  something  inherent  in  themselves? 
And  if  the  latter,  how  is  that  something  to  be  determined  ? 
There  is  a  tendency  on  the  part  of  many  Christian  theologians, 
born  of  the  profound  belief  in  the  absolute  depravity  of  the 
human  race,  the  utter  incapacity  of  the  child  to  be  taken  into 
the  counsels  of  its  parent  and  be  governed  by  reason  and  love, 
the  belief  that  it  must  be  held  aloof  and  governed  by  un- 
explained commands  enforced  by  the  rod  of  discipline,  to 
determine  the  moral  commands  on  the  basis  of  external 
authority.  The  Decalogue  is  set  off  by  itself  as  given  in  a 
special  sense  by  God,  written  by  His  own  finger  on  tables  of 
stone.  But  if  the  basis  on  which  it  is  determined  that  the 
commandments  of  the  Decalogue  are  the  moral  command- 
ments be  merely  the  basis  of  external  authority,  an  external 
command  from  God,  then  it  would  seem  that  we  cannot  stop 
with  the  Decalogue,  and  that  the  great  bulk  of  the  civil, 
ceremonial,  and  ritual  precepts  of  the  Pentateuch  could  claim 
a  similar  authority  as  the  dicta  of  God  Himself,  which  could 
not  be  disregarded  without  discrediting  the  Almighty;  for 
these  laws  also  are  declared  to  be  spoken  by  God,  and  there 
is  no  indication  in  the  context  that  they  are  temporary  in  their 
application  any  more  than  the  laws  of  the  Decalogue.  In 
point  of  practice,  moreover,  all  Christians,  with  the  exception 
of  one  infinitesimally  small  sect,  have  recognised  that  the 
commandments  of  the  Decalogue  are  not  exclusively  moral, 
and  are  consequendy  not  binding  throughout.  The  Fourth 
Commandment  was  thrown  out  at  an  early  date  by  the  Chris- 
tian Church  as  a  provision  of  Jewish  ritual,  not  binding  on 
the  Christian.  And  to  this  day,  with  the  exception  of  the 
Seventh  Day  J]aptists,  no  body  of  Christians  keeps  the  seventh 
day  as  a  Sabbath  day  of  rest  to  the  Lord.  They  may  attempt 
to  posit  their  observance  of  the  first  day  on  a  moral  obligation 
to  rest  unto  God  one-seventh  of  the  time,  implied  in  the 
Fourth   Conmiandment ;    nevertheless,   the   fact   remains  that 


THE  BIBLE,  THE  CHURCH,  AND  REASON         27 

they  do  not  observe  the   Fourth   Commandment,  and   that 
they  treat  it  as  a  commandment  of  ritual  not  obUgatory  on 
them  to  keep  the  "seventh  day  as  the  Sabbath  of  the  Lord 
thy  God."     Neither  do  they  abstain  from  all  manner  of  work 
on  the  first  day  of  the  week,  even  when  they  call  that  day  the 
Sabbath  day,  they  "nor  their  sons  nor  their  daughters,"  much 
less  "their   menservants   nor   their   maidservants,"  and  very 
often  not   their   cattle.     The   Fourth  Commandment  is  not 
placed  in  practice  on  a  plane  with  the  other  commandments ; 
it  is  treated  as  a  ritual  commandment,  in  which  may  lurk  a 
moral  obligation,  but  which  is,  nevertheless,  in  itself  ritual 
and  ceremonial.     But  the  Jews  regarded  this  commandment 
as  of  equal  obligation  with  the  others ;  and  in  the  period  after 
the  Exile  it  assumed  an  importance,  if  possible,  above  the 
others  as  a  fundamental  principle  of  reUgion,  the  breach  of 
which  was  far  worse  than  theft,  for  instance,  and  to  be  punished 
more  severely  both  here  and  hereafter. 

Turning  to  the  words  of  our  Lord  in  the  New  Testament, 
we  do  not  find  Him  taking  the  position  that  the  command- 
ments of  the  Decalogue  had  a  special  character  derived  from 
authority,  placing   them   on   a   different   plane   from  the  re- 
mainder of  the  Old  Testament.     Indeed,  when  He  is  asked 
what  is  God's  highest  revelation  of  Himself  in  the  Law,  He 
does  not  refer  to  these  commandments  as  a  whole,  or  to  any 
one  of  them  separately,  but  quotes  from  Deuteronomy  vi.  5  : 
"Thou  Shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart,  and 
with  all  thy  soul,  and  with  all  thy  mind,"  asserting  that  this 
is  "the  first  and  great  commandment."     "And  the  second 
commandment,"  which    "is   like   unto  it,"   He  quotes   from 
Leviticus   xix.    18,   where,— mixed   in  with   civil,   ritual,   and 
ceremonial  laws,  so  that  the  laws  which  immediately  follow 
it  read:  "Thou  shalt  not  let  thy  cattle  gender  with  a  diverse 
kind :  thou  shalt  not  sow  thy  field  with  two  kinds  of  seed : 
neither  shall  there  come  upon  thee  a  garment  of  two  kinds 
of  stuff  mingled  together,"— stand  the  words:  "Thou  shalt  love 
thy  neighbour  as  thyself."     As  over  against  authority  our  Lord 
appeals  in  His  answer  to  the  lawyer  to  the  moral  sense  of  the 


28  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

man  himself.  The  sweet  reasonableness  of  His  statement  is 
its  proof.  It  is  not  because  He  says  it,  it  is  not  because  it 
reF^ts  on  some  external  authority  that  it  is  convincing — it  is 
because  it  is  true.  The  morality  of  it  is  recognised  by  the 
moral  sense  of  the  man ;  the  divine  in  the  man  recognises  the 
divinely  inspired  truth  when  it  is  presented  to  him.  The 
statement  in  the  seventh  Article  brings  us,  then,  logically  to 
this,  that  the  commandments  which  are  moral,  and  to  which 
every  Christian  ma:n  owes  obedience,  are  to  be  recognised  by 
their  morality  appealing  to  the  moral  nature  within  us,  or  in 
other  words,  to  our  reason.  Mere  external  authority  cannot 
settle  the  question,  for  even  in  the  Decalogue  itself  there  are, 
combined  with  the  immutable  and  infallible  moral  elements, 
other  elements  which  the  practically  unanimous  voice  of  the 
Christian  Church  has  declared  to  be  ritual  and  ceremonial, 
and  therefore  not  binding  on  Christians,  mutable  and  fallible. 
On  the  other  hand,  embedded  in  the  midst  of  laws  principally 
of  a  ceremonial  character,  stand  those  utterances  which,  as 
our  Lord  pointed  out,  are  eternally  true,  and  constitute  the 
highest  verbal  revelation  which  we  have  received  from  God. 

Now  this  seventh  Article,  as  stated  in  its  heading,  deals  only 
with  the  Old  Testament,  but  the  principle  which  it  establishes 
cannot  be  confined  to  the  Old  Testament.  It  is  a  general 
principle,  applicable  to  the  New  Testament  as  well.  If,  with 
our  Lord,  we  base  our  determination  of  what  is  eternal  and 
binding  in  the  Old  Testament  not  on  external  authority, 
but  on  the  inherent  truthfulness  of  the  thing  itself— and  He 
did  so,  not  merely  in  the  instance  above  cited,  but  whereso- 
ever in  His  teaching  there  was  occasion  to  do  so,  so  that, 
for  example.  He  deliberately  rejected  the  law  of  divorce  as 
contained  in  the  Mosaic  codes,  pronouncing  it  to  be  not 
consonant  to  the  law  of  God,  and  appealing  against  the 
authority  of  the  law  of  Moses  to  the  answer  of  the  enlightened 
consciences  of  men  ;  He  rejected  the  Pentateuchal  law  of 
retaliation  as  contrary  to  the  divine  law  of  love  as  witnessed 
by  the  consciences  of  men ;  and  where  He  cites  the  Scriptures 
in  proof  of  His  words,  as  He  loves  to  do.  He  appeals  through 


THE  BIBLE,  THE  CHURCH,  AND  REASON         29 

and  beyond  them  to  the  truth  of  God  as  witnessed  in  the 
consciences  of  the  sons  of  God,  so  that  it  was  said  of  Him 
that  He  "taught  as  one  having  authority  and  not  as  the 
scribes " — if,  with  Him,  we  base  our  determination  of  what 
is  eternal,  true,  and  binding  in  the  Old  Testament  not  on 
external  authority,  but  on  the  inherent  truth  of  the  thing 
itself,  we  have  established  a  general  principle  which  is  applic- 
able to  the  New  Testament  also,  and  even  to  the  words  and 
deeds  of  our  Lord  Himself.  We  have  laid  down  the  principle 
of  the  appeal  to  reason.  Facts  of  history  and  truths  of  religion 
in  the  Bible,  as  elsewhere,  must  be  settled  finally  by  the 
appeal  to  the  reasons  and  consciences  of  men.  Now  in  practice 
this  is  universally  recognised.  No  one  thinks  he  is  going 
to  convert  anyone  to  Christianity  except  by  an  appeal  to  his 
reason  and  his  conscience.  We  translate  the  Bible,  and 
spread  it  abroad,  that  the  reasonableness  and  the  inherent 
truth  of  it  may  appeal  to  the  hearts  and  minds  of  men.  We 
write  apologies  to  show  the  truth  of  Christ,  to  prove  to  the 
reasons  and  consciences  of  men  that  He  had  the  very  truth  of 
God.  It  is  a  premise  on  which  our  whole  practice  is  founded, 
that  reason  and  conscience  are  the  ultimate  judges  of  the 
truth. 

But  in  theory  this  is  not  always  recognised,  and  we  are  told 
that  the  Bible  or  the  Church,  and  not  reason,  must  be  the 
ultimate  judge  of  the  truth  of  any  proposition.  What  should  be 
the  position  of  the  Bible  and  the  Church  in  relation  to  reason  ? 
Does  not  the  statement  that  reason  is  the  ultimate  judge 
of  the  truth  deny  the  inspiration,  and  hence  divine  authority 
of  the  Bible,  and  place  it  on  a  par  with  other  books? 
And  does  it  not,  on  the  other  hand,  destroy  the  authority 
of  the  Church,  setting  up  private  judgment  in  the  place  of 
Catholic  truth,  and  putting  a  premium  on  the  multiplication 
of  sects  ?  Let  us  see  what  are  the  relations  to  one  another  of 
private  judgment  and  the  judgment  of  the  Church  in  this 
matter.  The  Church  antedates  the  Bible;  the  Church  gave 
the  Bible  to  the  world.  It  did  not  do  this,  however,  by 
appointing  a  commission  to  write  a  Bible,  or  even  to  decide 


30  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

what  books  should  form  the  Bible.  This  book  appealed  to 
the  hearts  and  minds  of  Christian  men  in  this  place,  and  was 
rejognised  by  them  as  bringing  them  a  message  from  God; 
that  book  appealed  to  men  in  another  place.  There  were 
many  histories  of  our  Lord's  life  written.  Little  by  little  the 
general  consensus  of  Christian  opinion  selected  four  Lives 
(if  the  Gospel  of  St.  John  can  properly  be  called  a  Life  of 
Christ  Jesus)  from  all  these  as  worthy  of  a  special  place  in  the 
use  and  worship  of  the  Church.  St.  Paul  wrote  many  letters  ; 
of  which  in  course  of  time  a  few  came  to  be  held  in  special 
reverence  as  possessing  a  permanent  message  of  God  to  the 
Church.  At  first  the  same  books  were  not  held  in  honour 
in  all  the  churches.  But  little  by  little,  as  the  result  of  the 
experience,  not  of  one  age  nor  one  nation,  but  of  many 
generations  through  all  the  world,  a  reasonable  consensus 
of  opinion  was  reached  as  to  the  books  which  constitute  Holy 
Scripture,  which  are  inspired  of  God  for  the  guidance  and 
instruction  of  man.  Men  found  that  these  books  had  a  special 
message  to  their  hearts  and  reasons  from  their  Father  in 
Heaven  which  no  other  books  had.  These  books  exercised 
a  peculiar  influence  on  the  minds  and  lives  of  men.  Now 
there  were  books  quite  outside  of  the  Bible  that  exercised  this 
influence  on  particular  individuals  or  groups  of  individuals,  or 
even  on  particular  ages,  as  witness  the  influence  of  the  Book 
of  Enoch,  quoted  as  Holy  Scripture  in  the  Epistle  of  St.  Jude, 
and  adopted  into  the  canon  of  at  least  one  national  Church  as 
inspired ;  or  the  position  of  the  Pastor  of  Hermas  in  the 
second  century.  Think  of  the  influence  of  Thomas  a  Kempis' 
Imitation;  of  the  Te  Deum,  the  Gloria  in  Excelsis^  etc. 
And  there  are,  in  the  experience  of  us  all,  books  outside  of 
the  Bible  which  exercise  such  an  influence  on  individuals  or 
groups  of  individuals  at  the  present  day.  Those  books  do 
not  come  into  the  Bible  for  the  reason  that  experience  has  not 
shown  that  they  have  those  qualties  which  enable  them  to 
exercise  this  influence,  not  merely  on  a  few  individuals  or 
on  the  individuals  of  one  generation,  but  on  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  men  through  generation  after  generation.     The 


THE  BIBLE,  THE  CHURCH,  AND  REASON         31 

judgment  of  the  Church  is  nothing  more  than  the  consensus 
of  the  private  judgments  of  those  that  constitute  the  Church — 
Christian  behevers  now  as  well  as  in  the  earlier  centuries,  and 
then  as  well  as  now.  It  is  the  eternal  truth  of  the  books  of 
the  Bible,  as  testified  to  by  the  universal  consent  of  the 
Church  throughout  the  ages,  which  leads  us  to  set  them  aside 
from  other  books.  As  we  have  found  that  they  have  uplifted 
and  inspired  men  through  all  these  ages,  so  we  conclude  that 
they  will  continue  to  do  the  same  through  the  ages  that  are 
yet  to  come.  But  this  does  not  mean  to  say  that  each  book 
has  had  a  message  for  each  individual  soul,  nor  even  for  each 
age.  Probably  no  one  individual  finds  each  book  inspired  to 
him.  Possibly  he  finds  some  book  not  in  the  Bible  inspired 
to  him  above  anything  that  is  in  the  Bible.  If  his  individual 
experiences  in  this  matter  were  to  become  the  universal 
experience  of  Christian  men  through  a  series  of  ages,  then 
that  book  would  be  added  to  the  Bible,  because  the  Church 
would  have  proved  by  experience  that  it  was  inspired.  With 
regard  to  the  Bible,  the  Church  simply  testifies  to  a  fact 
of  experience,  when  it  testifies  that  these  books  are  holy 
writings.  It  has  collected  together  those  books  of  which  it 
has  made  this  experience.  It  hands  them  to  the  individual 
Christian  to  study  for  proof  of  the  truth  which  it  teaches.  So 
far  as  he  himself  is  concerned,  he  cannot  help  using  his 
private  judgment  in  the  study  of  these  books,  if  he  would. 
The  Church  Catholic  knows  from  experience  that  this  collection 
of  books  is  inspired ;  and  therefore  it  knows  that,  all  things 
being  as  they  ought  to  be,  a  man  of  well-balanced  heart  and 
mind,  exercising  his  private  judgment  in  its  study,  will  recognise 
this  inspiration,  and  that  the  more  deeply  and  thoroughly 
he  studies  the  Bible  the  more  profoundly  will  he  believe  in 
its  inspiration.  It  challenges  the  critical  study  of  these  books 
as  other  books  are  studied,  the  investigation  of  their  testi- 
mony for  themselves  and  for  the  doctrine  inculcated,  as  all 
other  testimony  is  investigated.  It  does  not  suppose  that 
each  book  will  appeal  in  the  same  way  or  the  same  degree  to 
the  life  of  each  individual ;  it  does  not  claim  that  each  book 


32  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

will  be  found  infallible  in  all  its  parts  ;  but  it  does  know  that 
these  books  are  and  will  always  be  found  to  be  holy  writings, 
inspired  of  God.  In  actual  practice  there  is  no  conflict  in 
this  matter  between  the  true  idea  of  the  authority  of  the  Holy 
Catholic  Church  and  the  right  of  private  judgment.  The 
judgment  of  the  Church  is  the  consensus  of  the  private 
judgments  of  the  individuals  who  compose  that  Church — of  all 
the  saints.  It  is  a  composite  photograph  in  which  each 
Christian  is  included,  but  it  is  not  a  private  photograph  of 
each  individual  Christian. 

And  now  as  to  the  multiplication  of  sects.  It  is  true  that 
the  multiplication  of  sects  is  due  to  the  abuse  of  private  judg- 
ment, but  in  quite  a  different  direction.  It  is  due  to  the 
abuse  of  private  judgment  on  the  part  of  individuals,  groups 
of  individuals,  and  generations,  who  have  undertaken  to  saddle 
Holy  Scripture  with  a  talmud,  or  interpretation,  representing 
their  own  private  judgment  of  what  that  Scripture  ought  to 
mean. 

This  brief  notice  of  the  testimony  of  the  Church  to  the 
Holy  Scriptures  would  be  incomplete  if  we  did  not  also  say 
a  word  about  the  testimony  of  the  Church  to  the  different 
value  or  holiness  of  the  different  parts  of  Holy  Scripture. 
Every  intelligent  reader  finds  that  there  is  a  great  difference  in 
the  amount  of  divine  truth  contained  in  the  different  books  of 
the  Bible,  and  the  Church  as  a  whole  testifies  to  the  same 
fact  as  the  result  of  the  experience  of  its  individual  members. 
The  Jewish  Church  did  not  place  all  parts  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment on  the  same  plane,  and  the  Christian  Church  has  made 
,the  same  experience.  The  Christian  Church  regards  the  Old 
Testament  as  distinctly  inferior  in  its  inspiration  to  the  New, 
and  so  strongly  has  this  been  felt  to  be  the  case,  so  wide  does 
the  moral  gap  between  parts  of  the  Old  Testament  and  the 
doctrine  of  Jesus  Christ  seem  to  be,  that  at  times  there  has 
been  on  the  part  of  some  an  inclination  to  throw  the  Old 
Testament  aside  altogether  as  contrary  to  the  New,  or  as 
transitory  in  its  character ;  opinions  to  which  reference  is 
made  in  the  seventh  Article  of  the  Articles  of  Religion.    Again, 


THE  BIBLE,  THE  CHURCH,  AND  REASON         33 

there  are  some  books  in  the  New  Testament  which  have  been 
seriously  questioned  at  one  time  or  another.  The  book  of 
Revelation,  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  and  some  of  the 
Catholic  Epistles  were  long  refused  admission  to  the  Holy 
Scripture  in  various  parts  of  the  ancient  Church.  There  are, 
furthermore,  books  which  were  at  one  time  received  as  Holy 
Scripture  by  some  part  of  the  Catholic  Church,  but  which  are 
now  rejected,  and  there  are  books  which  are  now  accepted  as 
Holy  Scripture  by  one  part  of  the  Church  and  rejected  by 
another.  The  limits  of  the  canon,  at  its  lower  end,  are  some- 
what ill  defined.  But  while  this  is  intensely  annoying  to  those 
theorists  who  have  some  private  doctrine  about  the  inspiration 
of  Holy  Scripture  and  the  origin  of  the  Bible,  it  is  not  in  fact 
confusing  to  the  person  who  realises  what  Holy  Scripture  is, 
and  goes  to  it  for  what  it  contains.  About  the  bulk  of  the 
books  there  has  never  been  any  real  doubt,  because  their 
spiritual  eminence  is  so  clear.  They  would  give  us,  if  by  any 
misfortune  we  were  ever  deprived  of  the  other  books,  all  the 
historical  and  doctrinal  facts  which  are  essential.  There  are 
other  books  in  which  the  human  element,  if  I  may  so  express 
myself,  the  temporary  and  mutable,  is  more  prominent.  For 
along  with  the  eternal  and  immutable  in  each  book  there  is 
a  temporal  and  mutable  element.  These  elements  are  com- 
bined in  different  proportions ;  and  as  the  proportion  of  the 
eternal  and  immutable  diminishes,  so  the  claim  of  the  book 
to  what  we  call  inspiration,  to  be  regarded  as  a  Holy  Writing, 
diminishes.  But  at  what  point  shall  we  say  that  inspiration 
ceases  ?  that  the  proportion  of  the  mutable  to  the  immutable 
is  so  large  that  we  can  no  longer  call  the  book  holy?  That 
is  a  question  to  be  decided  by  the  experience  of  the 
Church  rather  than  by  theory.  In  practice  it  is  pertinent 
with  regard  to  the  Apocrypha  of  the  Old  Testament,  which 
is  placed  by  the  Roman  Church  in  the  Bible,  thrown  out 
of  the  Bible  altogether  by  the  extreme  Protestants,  and 
placed  half  in  it  half  out  of  it  by  the  Greek  Church,  as 
well  as  by  our  own  Church,  as  being,  as  our  sixth  Article 
has   it,  good   to  read  "for  example  of  life  and   instruction 

D 


34  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND   NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

of    manners,"    but    not    to    be    applied    "to    establish    any 
doctrine." 

Now  there  are  some  to  whom  such  statements  as  these, 
although  founded  on  the  Bible  itself,  on  the  history  of  the 
Church,  and  on  those  doctrinal  statements  which  possess 
most  authority  among  us,  will  seem  to  be  subversive  in  some 
way  of  the  doctrine  of  the  inspiration  of  the  Bible,  and  to 
place  that  book  on  a  par  with  other  books.  These  men  seek 
to  safeguard  the  sanctity  of  the  Bible  by  such  statements  as 
this:  The  books  of  Scripture  "are  one  and  all,  in  thought 
and  verbal  expression,  in  substance  and  form,  wholly  the 
Word  of  God,  conveying  with  absolute  accuracy  and  divine 
authority,  all  that  God  meant  them  to  convey,  without  human 
additions  or  admixtures."  Or,  again,  "All  written  under  it 
[the  Divine  influence  called  inspiration]  is  the  very  Word  of 
God,  of  infallible  truth  and  of  divine  authority ;  and  this 
iiifallibility  and  authority  attach  as  well  to  the  verbal  expres- 
sion in  which  the  revelation  is  conveyed  as  to  the  matter  of 
the  revelation  itself."  Again,  we  are  told  that  "the  Scriptures 
contain  no  errors,"  and  that  if  it  could  be  proved  that  there 
are  any  errors  in  matters  of  physical  science,  or  any  "  erroneous 
statements  and  contradictory  accounts  in  the  Holy  Scriptures, 
their  plenary  inspiration  must  be  renounced."  I  have  been 
quoting  from  the  Presbyterian  talmud,  written  by  the  learned 
^  scribes  of  the  law  who  sit  among  the  Presbyterians  in  Moses' 
seat.  And  they  have  done  just  what  the  scribes  of  our  Lord's 
day  did  ;  they  have  so  overlaid  the  law  with  their  interpretation 
of  it  that  the  law  itself  is  lost.  Now  the  conception  of  Divinity 
•  has  been  a  conception  of  something  remote  from  the  human, 
surrounded  with  clouds  and  thick  darkness,  revealed  in  thun- 
derings,  lightnings,  and  portents.  It  is  this  conception  of 
Divinity  which  is  represented  in  every  heathen  religion,  and 
even  in  official  Judaism,  although  there  were  those  among 
the  prophets  who  had  a  vision  of  something  truer  and  better. 
The  same  false  conception  of  God,  followed  out  in  another 
direction,  has  led  men  to  seek  to  make  their  sacred  books 
sacred  by  wrapping  them  about  with  awe  and  wonder,  with 


THE  BIBLE,  THE  CHURCH,  AND  REASON         35 

theories  of  their  divinity,  and  with  talmiids^  or  teachings, 
through  which  only  men  should  be  allowed  to  approach  them. 
They  must  not  be  handled  like  other  books ;  the  same  canons 
of  criticism  must  not  be  applied  to  them  which  are  applied  to 
other  books.  If  you  would  learn  to  know  the  Veda,  you  must 
go  to  the  Brahmins,  and  ask  them  to  interpret  it  according  to 
their  traditions  and  doctrines.  It  is  profanation  to  study  it  as 
you  study  other  books.  The  very  language  in  which  it  is 
written  is  holy.  It  is  itself,  not  merely  the  Word  of  God,  but 
the  very  brain  of  God.  The  Moslems  say  almost  the  same 
thing  of  the  Koran ;  the  scribes  of  our  Lord's  day  said  the 
same  thing  of  the  Law  of  Moses;  and,  unfortunately,  some 
Christians  have  undertaken  to  teach  the  same  thing  about  our 
Scriptures  of  both  Old  and  New  Testaments.  Now  if  the 
Bible  is  no  better  than  the  Veda  or  the  Koran,  well  and 
good ;  let  us  treat  it  in  the  same  way  in  which  Brahmins  and 
Moslems  treat  their  sacred  books,  and  shield  it  and  guard  it, 
and  hedge  about  its  divinity,  for  fear  men  should  examine  it 
too  closely  and  find  that  there  is  none  there.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  we  believe  that  the  Bible  is  really  different  from  these 
other  books  of  the  nations ;  that  it  stands  on  a  far  higher 
plane ;  unique,  needing  no  concealment  and  no  bolstering  up 
with  traditions  and  doctrines,  as  those  other  books  do,  let  us 
lay  it  down  open  before  the  world,  and  challenge  men  to  read, 
study,  and  examine  it  with  all  the  critical  apparatus  which  they 
use  in  the  study  of  other  books. 

As  a  practical  fact  we  cannot  do  anything  else  unless  we 
would  stultify  ourselves,  for  we  have  said  to  the  adherents 
of  every  other  religion — to  Brahmins  and  Buddhists,  and 
Moslems  and  Confucianists  and  whatever  else  besides — give 
us  your  proofs,  and  let  us  test  them  in  the  hght  of  reason, 
according  to  the  reasonable  methods  by  which  we  examine 
other  books,  whether  professing  to  be  records  of  historical 
fact,  statements  of  scientific  truth,  philosophical  specula- 
tions, or  ethical  teaching.  You  say  these  books  are  divine; 
prove  it.  Give  your  books  open  to  the  jury  of  the  world. 
Let  the  critics  scrutinise  them,  analyse  them,  criticise  them 


36  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

according  to  the  canons  of  modern  criticism,  by  which  they 
criticise  all  books.  And  so  we  must  lay  the  Bible  open 
before  the  jury  of  the  world,  and  bid  it  scrutinise,  analyse, 
criticise  the  Bible  according  to  the  same  canons  of  criticism 
which  it  applies  to  the  Veda,  the  Koran,  and  other  so-called 
holy  books.  The  man  who  really  beheves  in  the  inspiration 
of  the  Bible  ought  not  to  be  afraid  of  such  a  test. 

But,  furthermore,  this  method  of  treating  the  Bible  is  in 
fact  the  Divine  method,  as  over  against  the  heathen  method 
pursued  by  the  Brahmins,  Moslems,  and  the  like,  and  un- 
fortunately also  by  some  Christians,  who  would  hide  their 
Scriptures  in  the  thick  clouds  of  foreign  tongues  and  traditional 
interpretations,  and  protect  their  sanctity  by  the  fulmination  of 
doctrinal  anathemas.  As  over  against  the  false  ideas  of  God 
presented  by  other  religions,  Christianity  presents  the  idea 
of  a  present  and  loving  God,  Who  reveals  Himself  to  man  in 
man.  This  is  the  very  foundation-stone  of  the  Christian 
religion — that  God  revealed  Himself  to  man  in  a  Man  made 
like  men,  cast  down  to  struggle  side  by  side  with  men.  This 
God-Man  did  not  strike  little  children  dead  when  they  offended 
Him  in  their  play ;  nor  did  the  water  in  which  His  swaddling 
clothes  were  washed  work  miracles.  That  is  the  nonsense  of 
apocryphal  gospels,  in  which  men  not  inspired  by  the  Spirit 
of  God  vainly  sought  to  magnify  the  Divinity  of  Jesus  Christ, 
but,  as  the  Church  recognised,  did  really  profane  and  debase 
that  Divinity  in  the  attempt,  so  that  all  such  tales  were  soon 
relegated  to  the  lumber-room  of  silly  and  godless  fables.  He 
did  not  come  turning  the  stones  to  bread  to  feed  Himself; 
He  did  not  come  a  king  to  whom  all  the  kingdoms  of  the 
earth  were  given  and  the  riches  thereof;  He  did  not  come 
descending  in  clouds,  upborne  by  angels.  Those  were  the 
suggestions  of  the  devil  with  regard  to  the  nature  of  God, 
the  ideas  of  the  lower,  bestial,  devilish  nature  concerning 
Divinity  and  the  manifestation  of  Divinity.  The  real  Divinity 
was  manifested  in  quite  a  contrary  manner,  in  the  helpless 
Babe  of  Bethlehem  ;  in  the  lowly  Carpenter  of  Nazareth ;  in 
the  poor,  wandering,  loving,  suffering  Teacher  that  had  not 


THE  BIBLE,  THE  CHURCH,  AND  REASON         37 

where  to  lay  His  head ;  in  the  blameless  Convict,  despised, 
outcast,  executed  on  Calvary.  His  Divinity  was  not  mani- 
fested by  a  nimbus  about  His  head,  by  external  phenomena, 
by  place  and  power,  but  by  something  inherent  in  Himself, 
by  perfect  love  and  truth.  And  there  is  the  keynote  of 
the  whole  system — Divinity  in  humanity.  Dehumanise  Jesus 
of  Nazareth,  and  you  profane  His  Divinity.  Dehumanise 
the  Bible,  which  tells  about  Him,  and  you  profane  its 
divinity. 

But  I  do  not  mean  to  put  the  Bible  on  a  par  with  Jesus 
of  Nazareth.  It  is  the  written  witness  which  the  Church  lays 
before  the  world  to  substantiate  its  claim  that  He  is  the 
Saviour  of  the  world.  But  there  are  certain  definitions  of 
the  Bible  which  have  been  current  at  one  time  or  another, 
or  are  even  now  current  among  some  groups  of  Christians, 
which  in  their  anxiety  to  emphasise  the  sacred  character  of 
the  Holy  Scriptures  have  put  those  Scriptures  in  the  place 
of  Christ.  In  a  loose,  general  way  we  may  say  that  the  Bible 
is  the  Word  of  God,  as  we  do  say,  for  instance,  in  several 
places  in  our  Prayer  Book  j  but  to  say  in  theological  definition, 
as  the  second  Helvetic  Confession  does,  that  "the  Holy 
Scriptures  are  the  very  Word  of  God,"  or  that  "all  written 
under  it  [the  Divine  influence  called  inspiration]  is  the  very 
Word  of  God,  of  infallible  truth  and  of  divine  authority,"  as 
do  those  Presbyterian  divines  whom  I  have  quoted,  is  rank 
heresy,  for  it  degrades  Jesus  Christ,  placing  a  written  book 
in  His  place.  The  doctrine  of  the  New  Testament,  and  the 
doctrine  of  the  Catholic  Church  is  that  Jesus  Christ,  and 
He  only,  is  the  very  Word  of  God,  the  only  full,  perfect, 
and  complete  utterance  of  Himself  to  man  by  God.  The 
Bible  is  the  written  evidence  of  the  fact  that  Jesus  Christ  is 
the  very  Word  of  God,  true,  perfect,  and  infallible.  But  the 
Bible  is  not  itself  that  Word.  If  the  infallible  Word  of  God 
could  have  been  revealed  through  imperfect  and  fallible  men, 
like  Moses  and  the  prophets,  it  would  have  been  so  revealed. 
As  the  writer  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  puts  it  (viii.  7), 
"For  if  that  first  covenant  had  been  faultless,  then  would 


38  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

no  place  have  been  sought  for  a  second."  The  infallible 
Word  of  God  could  be  revealed  only  through  the  perfect 
Man,  Jesus  the  Christ,  who  is  the  very  Word  of  God.  The 
Bible  is  the  written  evidence  which  the  Church  presents  to 
the  world  to  prove  that  He  is  in  fact  that  Word,  and  it  is 
sufficient  for  that  purpose,  and  is  inspired  for  that  purpose. 
The  Church,  inspired  by  the  Spirit  of  the  living  God,  is  itself 
the  living  witness  to  the  truth  of  that  Word. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE    INCARNATION   AND   THE   NEWER 
CRITICISM 

THERE  is  at  present  a  somewhat  panicky  attitude  with 
regard  to  the  supposed  hostiUty  of  the  newer  criticism 
to  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation.     It  is  natural  that  when 
anything  new  is  introduced  it  should  be  watched  with  much 
suspicion,  and  it  is  certain  that  in  theological  circles  this  will 
always  be  the  case.     Doctors  and  lawyers  and  scientists  look 
with  more  or  less  distrust  on  all  new  theories,  because  the  new 
involves  the  removal  of  a  part  at  least  of  the  old  and  the  up- 
setting of  ideas  and  practices  and  customs.    Theology  is  much 
more  conservative  than  even  medicine,  or  law,  or  science,  be- 
cause  the   theologian   feels   that   he   is  deaHng   with   things 
infinitely  more  important  than  astronomy,  or  geology,  or  botany, 
or  medicine,  or  law.     Now,  whenever  a  new  theory  is  presented 
with   regard  to  anything,  it  is  difficult  at  first  to  determine 
exactly  what  its  ultimate  effects  will  be,  and  consequently  the 
most  singular  mistakes  are  often  made  in  dealing  with  new 
theories,  those  who  should  be  their  natural  friends  sometimes 
becoming,  through  misunderstanding,  their  deadliest  foes,  and 
vice  versa.     In  point  of  fact,  the  newer  criticism  lays  its  special 
emphasis  on  the  Incarnation ;  you  might  almost  say  that  it  is 
a  protest   against   a   prevalent   but   ancient   disbelief  in  the 
Incarnation. 

Men  of  that  school  or  tendency  of  thought,  often  called 
the  Newer  Criticism,  or  the  Higher  Criticism,  if  they  were 
to  define  their  position  as  over  against  the  position  of  the 
traditionalists,  might  well  take  as  their  text  our  Lord's  declara- 

39 


40  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

tion  of  the  method  of  God's  revelation  of  Himself  to  man 
in  answer  to  the  temptations  in  the  wilderness.  The  common 
human  conception  of  God  is  of  something  awful  and  miracu- 
lous, bursting  out  in  lightning  and  thunder,  manifesting  itself 
in  startling  breaches  of  the  law  of  nature.  God  should  show 
Himself  as  God  by  turning  the  stones  into  bread,  by  casting 
Himself  down  from  a  pinnacle  in  the  temple,  and  floating 
into  the  gaping  crowd  beneath  in  glory,  surrounded  by  hosts 
of  angels.  That  is  the  common  human  conception  of  the 
incarnation  of  God.  To  this  Jesus  opposes  the  conception 
of  the  Son  of  Man.  The  Son  of  God  is  equally  the  Son 
of  Man — perfect  Man.  He  lives  the  life  of  ordinary  men ; 
He  eats  and  drinks  as  they  do ;  He  suffers  as  they  do ;  He 
is  subject  to  the  natural  human  desires  and  passions;  He  is 
made  in  all  respects  such  as  we  are,  the  only  exception  being 
that  He  does  not  fail  to  live  up  to  the  standard  of  His  being. 
He  realises  the  full  possibihties  of  His  Manhood,  and  is  with- 
out sin.  Now,  this  conception  of  a  revelation  of  God  was 
opposed  to  the  commonly  received  ideas  among  the  Jews  at 
that  time,  and  opposed  to  the  common  ideas  of  men  in 
general.  The  Jews  regarded  Sinai  as  the  representative  of 
the  highest  revelation  of  God  to  man.  God  is  hidden  away 
in  clouds  and  darkness ;  the  thunder  and  lightning  reveal  His 
presence;  the  mountain  on  .which  His  glory  rests  is  so  holy 
that  if  one  do  but  touch  it  he  shall  die;  So  awful  is  God  that 
the  sight  of  Him,  or  even  the  near  approach  to  His  presence, 
must  produce  death.  The  Pharisees  demanded  of  our  Lord 
some  sign,  some  manifestation  of  miraculous  power  as  an 
evidence  of  His  Divinity.  He  always  and  invariably  refused 
to  give  such  a  sign.  It  is  a  temptation  of  the  devil.  That 
is  not  the  true  and  highest  revelation  of  God  to  man.  The 
highest  revelation  of  God  to  man  must  be  made  in  man 
himself,  developed  to  the  perfection  of  his  manhood,  sinless 
and  holy. 

The  same  problem  which  perplexed  the  Pharisees  with 
regard  to  this  Man  who  claimed  to  be  divine  perplexed  the 
Christians  of  a  later  day.     In  the  docetic  Gospel  of  St.  Peter, 


INCARNATION   AND    NEWER   CRITICISM  41 

a  partial  text  of  which  was  so  strangely  recovered  from  an 
Egyptian  tomb  not  long  since,  we  find  these  ideas  expressing 
themselves  in  an  anti-human  representation  of  Christ.  His 
human  form  was  a  mere  appearance,  the  divine  was  the 
reaUty ;  and  the  divine  is  so  opposed  to  and  so  different  from 
the  human,  that  it  must  be  the  case  that  it  manifested  itself 
in  wonderful  and  startling  phenomena.  This  was  the  line 
of  reasoning  which  produced  the  docetic  Gospel  of  St.  Peter, 
and  many  other  writings  of  a  far  more  extravagant  character. 

There  was  no  intention  of  telling  that  which  is  untrue, 
there  was  a  most  sincere  desire  to  tell  the  truth ;  but  doctrine, 
preconceived  notions,  colour  everything  that  such  writers  tell 
about  our  Lord.  They  start  with  a  fundamental  doctrine  of 
divinity  as  something  anti-human,  and  whenever  they  come 
to  anything  in  the  narrative  of  our  Lord's  life  which  represents 
Him  simply  as  a  man,  they  modify  it  in  accordance  with  that 
doctrine  which  they  believe  to  be  true. 

The  same  general  conception  of  Divinity  lies  at  the  bottom 
of  the  gnostic  heresies.  The  idea  of  Divinity  which  found 
expression  in  the  Indian  cosmogonies  represents  God  as  some- 
thing infinitely  removed  from  man  and  the  world,  and  even 
from  all  action.  Creation  itself  is  a  process  which  cannot 
proceed  directly  from  the  Almighty,  because  He  has  no  needs, 
no  wants,  and  exercises  no  activities ;  and  the  effort  of  such 
systems  is  to  account  for  creation  and  the  world  with  as  little 
contradiction  of  this  fundamental  and  fundamentally  false 
conception  of  God  as  possible.  As  the  next  best  thing  to 
denying  absolutely  all  connexion  between  God  and  creation, 
they  separate  the  two  by  unending  aeons,  and  remove  Him 
from  direct  contact  with  the  world  by  the  supposition  of 
emanation  upon  emanation.  This  Indian  theory  is  also,  in 
so  far,  the  gnostic  theory.  Almighty  God  is  infinitely  removed 
from  the  world  and  all  concern  in  the  activities  of  man.  The 
direct  manifestation  of  Himself  to  man  in  human  form  is 
inconceivable.  Divinity  is  manifested,  it  is  true,  but  this 
Divinity  is  infinitely  removed  from  the  Eternal  All. 

Although  these  docetic  and  gnostic  views  were  pronounced 


42  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

heretical  by  the  Church,  yet  because  they  contained  a  con- 
ception of  Divinity  which  is,  one  might  say,  common  to  the 
race,  therefore  we  find  the  condemned  heresies  exercising 
a  very  great  modifying  influence  upon  the  thought  of  the 
Christian  Church.  Unconsciously,  popular  theology  first, 
and  afterwards  the  theology  of  theologians,  adopted  into 
itself  a  certain  portion  of  that  docetic  conception  which, 
theologically  interpreted,  denies  the  complete  Humanity  of 
our  Lord.  The  Bible  itself  states  that  He  was  born  of  a 
pure  virgin,  conceived  of  the  Holy  Ghost  and  not  of  man. 
Not  content  with  this  statement  of  the  division  of  our 
Lord's  nature,  by  which  He  was  equally  God  and  Man, 
born  of  both  alike,  a  tendency  soon  manifested  itself  to 
exalt  and  magnify  the  mother  of  Jesus  into  Divinity,  thus 
denying  in  fact,  if  not  in  formal  doctrine,  the  perfect 
Humanity  of  the  nature  of  our  Lord. 

The  various  heathen  worships  which  were  absorbed  into 
Christianity  at  one  place  or  another  tended  to  help  forward 
the  deification  of  the  Virgin.  Everywhere  there  had  been 
an  inclination,  especially  everywhere  in  the  East,  to  worship 
the  Divinity  in  a  bi-sexual  way ;  where  there  was  a  god,  there 
was  also  a  goddess.  The  half-converted  heathen  who  entered 
the  Christian  Church  found  in  the  worship  of  the  Virgin  that 
worship  of  the  female  half  of  Divinity  to  which  they  were 
used  in  their  own  religions.  This,  as  I  have  said,  had  its 
effect,  and  a  very  great  effect,  upon  the  theology  of  the 
Christian  Church,  until  at  last  you  find  in  the  dark  and 
middle  ages,  in  popular  theology  at  least,  the  Virgin  Mary 
exalted  into  heaven  itself.  Jesus  is  no  longer  the  Son  of  the 
pure  Virgin  of  Nazareth,  but  the  Son  of  the  great  goddess, 
queen  of  heaven.  The  final  theological  assertion  of  this 
doctrine  on  the  part  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  did  not 
take  place,  it  is  true,  until  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  when  the  Pope  promulgated  as  a  doctrine  of  the 
Church  the  doctrine  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  of  the 
Virgin,  thus  removing  our  Lord's  connexion  with  humanity 
one  step  back ;  in  gnostic  language  placing  another  aeon  or 


INCARNATION   AND    NEWER   CRITICISM  43 

emanation  between  God  and  man.  But  in  promulgating 
this  doctrine  the  Pope  only  put  into  theological  form  the 
actual  popular  beHef  of  the  Church  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
which  is  in  most  particulars  the  belief  of  the  Church  of  Rome 
of  to-day. 

The  Reformers  of  the  sixteenth  century  resisted  this  Romish 
doctrine  of  the  divinity  of  the  Virgin  Mary ;  nevertheless,  a 
large  element  of  the  docetic  conception  which  lay  behind 
the  deification  of  the  Virgin  embodied  itself  in  the  ordinarily 
received  Protestant  theology.  This  showed  itself  particularly 
in  the  treatment  of  the  Bible.  It  has  been  exceedingly 
difficult  for  the  theologians  to  grasp  the  full  significance 
of  the  revelation  of  God's  Word  in  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 
There  is  no  doubt  in  their  minds  of  His  Divinity,  the  doubt 
is  about  the  human  side  of  His  nature ;  and  if  they  have 
not  fully  realised  this,  much  less  have  they  realised  the 
human  side  in  the  written  and  imperfect  word,  which  in 
their  theology  has  been  put  in  the  place  of  the  incarnate 
Word  of  God. 

To  turn  back  to  our  Lord's  temptations,  to  which  I  have 
referred  before,  we  find  that  He  asserts  that  that  idea  of  the 
manifestation  of  the  Divinity,  which  is  represented  in  the  Old 
Testament  by  the  story  of  the  theophany  at  Sinai,  where  the 
Law  was  given  in  the  midst  of  clouds  and  darkness  and  dread, 
is  not  the  highest,  perhaps  I  should  rather  say  is  not  the 
correct  idea  of  the  manifestation  of  God.  He  who  is  very 
God  shall  not  be  manifested  by  casting  Himself  from  the 
pinnacle  of  the  temple  upborne  by  clouds  of  angels ;  neither 
shall  all  kingdoms  of  the  earth  see  in  Him  a  temporal  master 
before  whom  they  shall  bow  themselves  in  submission;  neither 
shall  His  touch  turn  the  stones  about  Him  into  bread ;  but 
He,  the  very  God,  shall  be  manifested  in  very  man,  and 
the  evidence  of  His  Divinity,  the  outshining  of  His  glory,  shall 
be  the  perfection  of  the  divine  attributes  in  man,  the  attributes 
of  love  and  truth.  According  to  our  Lord's  teaching,  and 
as  the  necessary  outcome  of  His  example  in  the  revelation 
of  Himself  to  man,  we  are  forced  to  the  conclusion  of  the 


44  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

imperfection,  the  inadequateness,  and  the  humanness  of  all 
former  manifestations ;  that  is,  that  these  manifestations  of 
Gcd,  being  represented  to  us  through  human  agencies,  have 
been  coloured  with  the  lower  and  human  ideas.  No  man 
ever  saw  God  except  the  Son  of  Man  in  whom  God  was 
revealed,  and  when  men  thought  that  they  saw  or  knew  Him 
they  saw  Him  after  all  only  through  their  own  human  im- 
perfections ;  their  understanding  of  God  was  biased  by  their 
own  human  imaginings. 

Our  Lord  represents  the  perfect  Man ;  all  that  had  gone 
before  was  but  the  child  growing  to  the  man.  The  relation 
of  the  Old  Testament  history  and  of  the  life  of  Israel  to  our 
Lord  was  the  relation  of  the  child  to  the  full-grown  man. 
The  same  consciousness,  the  same  personality  is  there  from 
birth  until  it  reaches  its  maturity  in  perfect  Israel,  the  divine 
Son  of  Man ;  but,  unless  we  are  prepared  to  deny  the  perfect 
Divinity  of  our  Lord  in  fact,  if  not  in  name,  we  must  admit 
that  the  relation  of  this  growing  divine  personality  throughout 
the  old  dispensation  to  the  completed  Divine  Personality  in 
the  revelation  of  God  in  Jesus  Christ  was  that  of  the  child 
to  the  man.  There  were  not  two  complete  men.  You  cannot 
take  the  Law  or  the  Prophets  and  interpret  them  as  divine 
in  the  sense  in  which  you  interpret  the  words  and  acts  of  our 
Lord  as  divine,  without  belittling  and  denying  the  uniqueness 
of  His  Divinity.  But  this  is  precisely  what  Protestant  theology 
practically  did  in  placing  the  Old  Testament  on  an  equality 
with  the  New,  and  in  placing  the  words  of  the  followers  of 
our  Lord,  as  handed  down  to  us  in  the  Acts  and  Epistles, 
upon  an  equality  with  His  words,  or  even  in  placing  anything 
that  has  come  down  to  us  through  the  agency  of  other  men, 
as  the  interpreters  or  exponents  of  His  teaching,  upon  an 
equality  with  Himself. 

Israel  of  the  Old  Testament  stood  related  to  Christ  of  the 
New  Testament  as  you  and  I  as  children  stand  related  to  our- 
selves as  men,  and  we  must  interpret  the  history  of  the  Old 
Testament,  its  statements  about  God  and  the  Word  of  God, 
as  we,  looking  back  over  our  own  lives,  would  now  interpret 


INCARNATION   AND    NEWER   CRITICISM  45 

our  own  earlier  conceptions  of  God  and  of  things  in  the 
spiritual  world.  Let  me  illustrate  what  I  mean  by  a  very 
simple  example  of  my  own  childish  imaginings.  The  North 
Pole,  when  I  was  a  little  boy,  was  a  pole  on  an  observatory  at 
Fort  Lee  on  the  Hudson  River.  This  pole  was  as  nearly  as 
possible  north  from  the  point  at  which  I  usually  saw  it. 
I  suppose  my  father  had  indicated  it  to  me  sometime  as  an 
object  by  which  I  could  tell  the  direction  of  north ;  but, 
however  that  may  be,  having  come  to  know  that  that  did 
indicate  the  direction  of  north,  I  had  very  naturally  con- 
nected the  word  "pole,"  which  I  had  heard  in  statements 
about  the  North  Pole,  with  the  pole  on  this  observatory,  which 
appeared  to  be  due  north  from  me,  and  during  my  early  boy- 
hood I  supposed  in  consequence  that  that  was  the  North  Pole. 
Here  is  a  connexion  of  spiritual  or  intangible  fact  with  an 
outward  material  phenomenon  of  a  merely  accidental  nature. 
If  I  had  written  down  as  a  boy  that  the  North  Pole  was 
visible  from  the  river  bank  just  below  my  house,  and  that  the 
North  Pole  stood  on  the  bluff  above  Fort  Lee,  anyone  reading 
it  would  say,  "Why,  that  is  a  childish  conception  of  a  real 
fact.  He  has  grasped  the  fundamental  truth  that  that  direc- 
tion is  north,  but  his  horizon  is  not  sufficiently  large  to  enable 
him  to  understand  that  the  North  Pole  is  more  than  a  thou- 
sand miles  away  from  that  pole ;  nor  has  he  the  development 
of  abstract  reasoning  which  enables  him  to  conceive  of  the 
pole  as  merely  a  theoretical  point  instead  of  an  actual  outward 
and  visible  fact."  Now,  just  as  you  have  noted  great  differ- 
ences in  the  conceptions  of  the  Old  Testament,  just  so  are 
there  differences  of  conception  of  spiritual  things  according  to 
the  growth  and  development  of  the  man.  When  I  became  a 
big  boy  the  pole  on  the  Fort  Lee  Observatory  had  ceased  to  be 
the  North  Pole ;  so  also  Israel  grew  in  its  perceptions  of  truth 
from  infancy  to  youth. 

I  have  tried  to  state  certain  fundamental  principles  which 
lie  behind  the  whole  movement  which  has  often  been  desig- 
nated as  the  Newer  Criticism.  I  do  not  mean  that  every  one 
who  dabbles  in  higher  criticism  is  always  conscious  of  these 


46  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

basal  ideas  or  aware  that  he  is  affected  by  them ;  and  I  admit, 
on  the  other  hand,  that  a  great  many  persons  who  hold  up 
thei."  hands  in  holy  horror  at  the  mention  of  higher  criticism 
have  grasped  in  reality  this  underlying  doctrine  of  Incarnation, 
although  they  have  not  followed  it  out  to  its  logical  conse- 
quences in  the  interpretation  of  the  Bible.     The  application 
of  higher  criticism  in  the  study  of  the  scriptures  of  both  the 
Old  and  the  New  Testaments  is  a  logical  outcome  of  a  true 
conception  of  the  incarnation  of  God  in  Jesus  Christ.     Higher 
^criticism    means    nothing   more   than    literary   and   historical 
criticism  in  distinction  from  textual  criticism,  which  is  techni- 
cally called  lower  criticism.     Higher  criticism  must  be  made 
use  of  in  the  study  of  any  ancient  work,  and  no  one  thinks  of 
objecting   to   literary  and    historical   criticism  as   applied    to 
Homer,  or  the  Veda,  or  the  Koran,  or  Thucydides,  or  Livy, 
or  Dante,  or  Shakespeare.     In  each  case  we  must  first  study 
the  text  in  order  to  obtain  a  correct   reproduction    of   that 
which  was  written,  and  then  we  must  study  what  was  written 
as  literature,  in  relation  to  the  history  of  the  times  in  which  it 
was  written,  the  history  of  thought,  the  history  of  the  nation, 
and. the  history  of  the  individual.    We  must  determine  whether 
the  person  whose  name  has  been  connected  with  it  actually 
wrote  it,  how  he  wrote  it,  for  what  purpose  he  wrote  it,  etc. 
We  must  determine  whether  it  has  been  modified  at  a  later 
time,  and,  if  so,  how  and  for  what  reason.     All  these,  and  all 
questions  of  this  sort,  belong  to  the  realm  of  what  is  known  as 
Higher  Criticism.    If  we  believe  in  the  humanity  of  all  of  God's 
revelation  to  man,  we  shall,  of  course,  believe  in  the  humanity 
of  the  Scriptures,  and  consequently  must  apply  to  the  study  of 
those  Scriptures  human  methods.     Without  the  application  of 
these  human   methods  it  is  impossible  to  get  at  the  divine, 
because  the  divine  is  inclosed  in  a  human  body.     This  is  an 
application  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  in  the  perfect 
Word  of  God,   Jesus  the  Christ,  to  the  imperfect  word,  the 
Bible,  and  I  think  it  must  be  admitted  that  it  is  an  absolutely 
necessary  sequence  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation. 

Now  in  dealing  with  scriptures  among  all  nations  and  in  all 


INCARNATION   AND    NEWER   CRITICISM  47 

religions,  we  find  that  there  has  been  the  same  tendency 
to  attempt  to  magnify  the  divine  by  removing  it  absolutely 
out  of  the  sphere  of  the  human  which  there  has  been,  as  I 
have  already  pointed  out,  in  dealing  with  the  thought  of  the 
divine  in  every  other  relation.  This  is  truer  in  regard  to 
the  scriptures  of  some  of  the  Ethnic  religions  than  in  the  case 
of  the  Christian  Scriptures.  As  a  consequence  of  these 
tendencies  the  Brahmins  came  ultimately  to  regard  the  Veda 
as  self-created.  In  proportion  as,  owing  to  the  lapse  of  time 
and  change  of  language,  thought,  and  customs,  the  language 
of  the  Veda  became  unintelligible,  in  that  proportion  was  the 
Veda  theoretically  exalted  and  glorified.  A  religion  developed 
which  had  absolutely  nothing  to  do  with  the  Veda,  except 
that  it  was  remotely  descended  from  it,  and  the  adherents 
of  this  religion  professed  themselves  followers  of  the  book  of 
the  religion  which  it  had  superseded ;  and  not  only  followers 
of  it,  but  worshippers  also,  regarding  the  book  itself  as  a 
manifestation  of  God,  or  as  God,  self-created  and  self-creative. 
This  was  rendered  possible  by  the  method  of  interpretation 
which  was  applied  to  the  Veda,  by  which  the  Veda  itself  was 
completely  explained  away,  and  the  explanation  put  in  place  of 
the  original.  Of  course,  at  first  the  explanation  was  not  too 
remote  from  the  original  sense,  but  as  explanation  was  put 
upon  explanation,  and  the  explanations  became  in  their  turn 
the  subject  of  explanation  and  comment,  so  that  men  no 
longer  referred  to  the  book  itself,  surrounding  it  with  a  halo  of 
glory  and  treating  it  as  divine,  according  to  their  conception 
of  divine,  the  condition  was  reached  of  which  I  have  spoken, 
where  no  one  read  the  Veda  or  knew  anything  about  the 
Veda,  although  professedly  accepting  it  as  a  revelation  of 
Divinity.  A  similar  course  was  pursued  with  regard  to  the 
Zoroastrian  and  Moslem  scriptures.  It  is  a  common  thing  to 
find  Moslems  who  have  been  educated  to  read  the  words  of 
the  Koran,  and  who  learn  whole  chapters  to  recite  for  ritual 
purposes,  without  knowing  the  meaning  of  a  single  sentence. 
They  have  learned  it  by  rote :  the  language  is  different  from 
their  language ;   they  have  never  learned  that  language,  and 


48  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

consequently  they  do  not  know  the  meaning  of  what  they 
read  or  recite.     The  mere  recitation  of  those  sacred  words 
possesses  a  power  for  good ;  there  is  a  divinity  inherent  in  the 
outward  form  of  the  Koran,  the  touch  of  which  can  strengthen 
their  souls.     For  the  doctrines  of  their  religion  they  depend 
upon  the  explanations  of  the  theologians.    And  here  explanation 
has  been  heaped  upon  explanation,  until  the  original  sense  is 
buried  out  of  sight.     This  is  the  same  thing  which  the  Jews 
also  did  with  their  Scriptures,  and  our  Lord  rebuked  them  for 
their  quibbling  explanations,  by  which  the  sense  and  spirit 
of  the  original  had  been  lost.    Rabbinical  and  scribal  interpre- 
tation is  a  byword   to    us  at  the  present  day,  and  when  by 
chance  we  pick  up  and  read  passages  from  the  Talmud,  what 
impresses  us  most  of  all  is  the  absurd  remoteness  of  those 
interpretations   from   the   sense  of  the  passages  which  they 
pretend  to  interpret.     The  Jews  proceeded  on  the  theory  that 
all  knowledge  was  revealed  in  the  Bible.     To  him  who  under- 
stood the  interpretation,  geography,  astronomy,  and  ethnology 
were  taught  in  the  sacred  text.     Permit  me  to  cite  a  sober 
instance  of  this  method  of  interpretation  pursued  by  a  noted 
Jewish  interpreter  of  the  best  post-Talmudic  period,  viz.  Rashi. 
Commenting  upon  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis,  he  notes  that 
mention  is  twice  made  of  fowl.     In  the  twentieth  verse  it 
is  said,   "  Let  the  waters  bring  forth  abundantly  the  moving 
creature  that  hath  life,  and  fowl  that  may  fly  above  the  earth 
in    the    open    firmament    of    heaven."      And   again,    in    the 
twenty-second  verse,  it  is  said,  "  Be  fruitful,  and  multiply,  and 
fill  the  waters  in  the  seas,  and  let  fowl  multiply  in  the  earth." 
Therefore  God  said  both  to  the  waters  and  to  the  earth  to 
bring  forth  fowl.     Why  has  He  said  to  both  the  water  and  the 
earth  that  they  should  bring  forth  fowl,  while  He  said  to  the 
waters  only  to  bring  forth  fish,  and  to  the  earth  only  to  bring 
forth  the  beasts  of  the  earth  ?    Why  has  He  said  to  both  earth 
and  water,  "Bring  forth  fowl"?     Because  the  fowl  is  made 
out    of   mud.     It  is   earth  and  water  mixed  from  which  the 
^  fowl  is  brought  forth,  but  the  fishes  from  the  water  only,  and 
quadrupeds  from  dry  earth.     This  was  understood  by  men  of 


INCARNATION   AND    NEWER   CRITICISM  49 

the  Middle  Ages  as  scientific  and  even  rationalistic  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Bible. 

The  Christians  were  from  the  outset  deeply  affected  in  their 
interpretation  of  the  Bible,  especially,  of  course,  of  the  Old 
Testament,  by  Jewish  interpretation.  Indeed,  you  may  say 
that  they  were  dependent  upon  the  Jews  for  their  system 
of  interpretation,  and  in  the  case  of  the  Old  Testament,  for 
the  most  part,  for  the  details  of  that  interpretation  also.  There 
were  very  few  Christian  fathers  who  really  knew  anything 
whatever  about  the  Old  Testament.  St.  Augustine  founded 
mountains  of  theology  on  texts  of  the  Old  Testament,  of 
whose  meaning  he  had  no  proper  conception.  He  was  one 
of  those  who  objected  not  merely  to  the  higher  criticism,  but 
even  to  the  lower  or  textual  criticism  of  the  Bible.  He  was 
shocked  at  the  efforts  of  St.  Jerome  to  obtain  a  correct  Latin 
translation  of  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures.  He  had  taken 
the  current  and  corrupt  Latin  translation,  which  we  know 
as  the  Itala,  and  based  his  theological  propositions  upon 
interpretations  of  that  corrupt  text.  The  substitution  of  a 
correct  text  seemed  to  him  likely  to  shake  the  whole  system 
of  theology.  In  reaHty,  there  was  too  much  common  sense 
and  pure  godliness  in  much  of  what  St.  Augustine  had 
formulated  to  cause  the  removal  of  his  textual  substructure 
to  precipitate  a  downfall.  He  really  had  not  founded  his 
theology  on  those  scripture  texts  which  he  quoted,  but  on 
philosophical  speculation,  and  his  scriptural  texts  were,  so  to 
speak,  an  accident.  He  had  made  the  Scriptures  through 
those  texts  say  what  he  conceived  they  ought  to  say. 

In  exact  proportion  as  the  Church  allowed  the  Bible  to 
fall  into  disuse  did  it  profess  to  exalt  it  by  regarding  it  as 
infallible  and  inerrant.  I  do  not  mean  that  there  was  any 
formal  statement  of  the  Church  to  this  effect,  any  doctrinal 
declaration  by  the  Church  as  such  by  which  we  are  bound, 
but  I  mean  that  the  current  thought  of  the  Church  and  of 
its  theologians  was  in  this  direction.  The  Reformation  was  a 
recall  to  the  Bible  as  against  the  theological  interpretations 
and  doctrines  which,  professing  to  start  originally  from  texts 

E 


v^ 


so  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

of  the  Bible,  had  come  at  last  to  be  directly  contradictory 
of  those  texts,  so  that  the  Church  authorities  were  unwilling 
that  the  Bible  should  be  put  into  the  hands  of  those  who 
would  interpret  it  on  principles  of  common  sense,  and  not 
according  to  the  system  of  the  schools,  with  their  curious 
combinations  of  rabbinical  methods,  Greek  philosophy,  and 
scholasticism.  It  would  be  amusing,  did  space  permit,  to 
trace  the  Steps  by  which  the  Reformers,  in  their  efforts  to 
exalt  the  Bible,  as  over  against  Church  authority  and  Church 
tradition,  removed  it  from  the  sphere  of  men,  and  surrounded 
it  once  more  with  a  new  nebula  of  fanciful  interpretation. 
Men  like  to  put  their  Bible  in  the  heavens,  like  the  sun,  but 
when  they  have  done  so  they  are  too  apt  to  light  the  furnace 
of  their  petty  thinkings  and  make  the  air  so  dense  with  the 
smoke  of  their  theological  speculations,  like  the  fogs  of  London, 
that  the  sun  ceases  to  be  visible. 

You  will  observe,  by  the  way,  that,  precisely  as  in  St. 
Augustine's  day,  it  is  to-day  the  men  who  are  not  students 
of  the  Bible  itself,  who  are  not  familiar  with  the  languages 
in  which  it  is  written,  that  object  most  to  the  new  methods 
of  interpretation.  The  most  conservative  of  Bible  students,  in 
the  technical  sense  of  the  term,  is  generally  radical  in  com- 
parison with  the  scholastic  theologians  who  tell  him  out  of 
the  dark  and  mysterious  pages  of  the  Middle  Ages,  or  out 
of  the  dry  and  repellent  theology  of  the  Protestant  Reformers 
of  a  later  period,  what  the  Bible  ought  to  mean. 

The  proper  method  of  dealing  with  the  Scriptures  is  to 
apply  in  their  study  the  same  critical  methods  which  one 
,would  apply  in  the  study  of  other  books.  The  humanity 
that  is  in  them  requires  the  application  of  human  methods, 
and  without  those  human  methods  it  is  impossible  to 
obtain  from  the  Scriptures  their  real  sense.  It  is  fair  to 
say  also  that  the  objection  to  the  application  of  those 
methods  comes  from  lack  of  faith.  He  who  has  absolute 
and  complete  faith  in  God,  and  in  His  revelation  to  man 
through  man,  is  not  afraid  to  have  every  possible  light  of 
human  wisdom  turned  upon  the   Holy  Scriptures,   believing 


INCARNATION   AND    NEWER   CRITICISM  51 

that  the  more  their  humanity  is  understood  and  appreciated 
the  better  we  shall  perceive  the  divine  which  is  incarnate 
in  that  humanity. 

I  have  already  said  that  it  is  precisely  those  who  are  not 
technical  students  of  the  Bible  who  are  most  distressed  at 
the  application  of  such  methods  in  Bible  study  and  the 
results  which  the  critics  obtain.  This  is  entirely  natural. 
The  man  who  is  not  thoroughly  familiar  with  a  subject  in 
all  its  bearings  is  afraid  of  any  change,  because  he  is  apt 
to  confuse  the  temporary  and  the  permanent,  the  accidental 
and  the  necessary,  and,  not  being  certain  which  is  which, 
is  afraid  when  anything  is  touched  lest  the  whole  may  be 
destroyed.  The  skilful  sculptor  does  not  hesitate  to  cut 
deep  into  the  marble  with  his  chisel,  because  he  knows 
precisely  what  parts  of  the  marble  may  be  removed  and 
what  not.  He  who  is  not  a  sculptor  is  afraid  of  the  use 
of  the  chisel,  for  he  fears  that  if  anything  is  cut  away  all 
may  be  destroyed.  My  own  experience  in  dealing  with  the 
Bible  has  been  this :  I  did  not  thoroughly  appreciate  the 
divinity  of  the  Scriptures,  and  I  did  not  appreciate  the  Divinity 
of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  until  I  learned  to  appreciate  the 
humanity  of  both.  I  always  believed  in  the  divinity  of  both, 
but  my  belief  became  a  new  thing  when  I  began  to  study 
both  from  the  human  side.  When  I  was  able  to  picture 
our  Lord  Himself  thoroughly  and  completely  as  a  Man, 
living  as  a  Man  in  Judea  and  Galilee,  when  I  understood 
His  surroundings  as  a  Man,  and  viewed  Him  as  a  Man, 
hungering  and  thirsting,  tempted  and  tried,  with  real  human 
passions  and  pains,  then  I  learned  to  know  Him  as  God 
as  I  had  never  done  before.  God  had  come  down  out 
of  Heaven  in  very  deed,  and  stood  close  to  me  and  gave 
all  life  a  new  meaning.  In  the  same  way,  when  I  learned 
to  read  the  books  of  the  Bible  as  I  read  other  books,  when 
I  criticised,  analysed,  questioned  as  to  authorship,  assigned 
parts  of  books  to  different  influences ;  when  I  learned  to 
know  the  writer  through  his  style,  as  I  learned  to  know 
English  writers   through   their   style,  then   the  Bible   had  a 


52  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

new  meaning  for  me,  a  new  force,  and,  above  all,  a  divinity 
which  it  had  never  had  before.  From  my  own  individual 
experience  I  argue  naturally  to  the  general  experience.  I 
believe  that  this  method  of  study,  and  this  only,  will  bring 
out  fully  the  Divinity  of  our  Lord  and  the  divinity  of  the 
Scriptures;  not  a  divinity  so  far  removed  from  man  that 
its  magnitude  is  diminished  to  a  point,  like  the  stars,  but 
a  divinity  so  close  that  it  can  be  felt,  and  that  its  rays  warm, 
cheer,  and  cherish  like  the  sun. 

It  is,  of  course,  possible  to  press  the  study  of  the  humanity 
so  far  or  in  such  a  manner  that  the  divinity  is  completely 
lost  sight  of.  Scientists  in  studying  Nature  sometimes  do 
the  same  thing ;  but  I  do  not  think  that  anyone  on  that 
account  will  object  to  the  scientific  study  of  Nature.  I 
suppose  we  should  all  agree  that,  although  individuals  have 
in  the  study  of  Nature  lost  sight  of  God  and  become  un- 
believers, nevertheless,  for  the  Church  and  the  world  at 
large  the  increased  knowledge  of  Nature  has  meant  also 
an  increased  knowledge  of  God.  You  would  not  propose 
to  remedy  the  evils  of  unbelief  resulting  from  the  study  of 
Nature  by  forbidding  that  study,  or  by  denying  that  there 
is  such  a  thing  as  a  physical  universe.  No  more  is  it  prac- 
ticable to  remedy  the  evils  which  result  from  the  correct 
method  of  studying  the  Scriptures  by  forbidding  that  study, 
or  denying  the  humanity  that  is  in  those  Scriptures. 

Some  uneasiness  has  been  felt  because  of  the  idea,  most 
assiduously  promulgated  by  that  extreme  class  of  immovables 
who  always  seek  to  arrogate  to  themselves  the  title  of  orthodox, 
that  this  method  of  study  involves  the  denial  of  the  virgin  birth 
^v^  of  our  Lord,  and,  consequently,  of  the  Incarnation.  Now,  what 
I  have  been  endeavouring  to  show  is  that  the  whole  trend  of 
this  line  of  thought  is  to  affirm  the  Incarnation  with  especial 
emphasis,  as  over  against  the  tendency  which  has  prevailed  to 
belittle  or  minimise  the  Incarnation  in  the  endeavour  to  exalt 
the  Divinity.  There  may,  and  probably  will  be,  excesses  on 
the  part  of  individuals ;  and  in  opposition  to  that  school  which 
has  denied  the  human  birth  of  our  Lord  by  exalting  the  Virgin 


INCARNATION   AND    NEWER   CRITICISM  53 

out  of  humanity  into  divinity,  there  may  be  an  inclination  to 
lay  improper  stress  on  the  naturalness  of  our  Lord's  life.     The 
answer  to  this  error  of  excess  on  one  side  is  not  to  be  found 
in  the  error  of  excess  on  the  other.     It  does  not  lie  in  the 
deification  of  the  Virgin,  nor  in  magnifying  the  miraculous 
side  of  our  Lord  to  an  extent  which  turns  the  miracles  into 
meaningless  magic ;  nor  in  the  exaltation  of  the  Scriptures  as 
the  inerrant  Word  of  God,  infallible  and  inhuman  in  every 
part.     It  is  precisely  these  positions  which  have  driven  men 
to  excess  on  the  other  side,  which  have  made  them  unbelievers, 
or  Unitarians.     It  may  be  laid  down  as  a  general  truth  that 
every  heresy  is  caused  by  heterodox  doctrines  of  an  opposite 
character  within  the  Church ;  and  that  heresy  can  be  con- 
quered only  by  recognising  the  truth  at  which  it  aims,  and 
expressing   it   in  a  reasonable  and   orthodox  manner.     The 
Church  itself  has  asserted  in  its  Creed  that  Jesus  was  con- 
ceived by  the  Holy  Ghost  and  born  of  the  Virgin  Mary.    The 
purpose  of  this  article  of  the  Creed  is  to  assert  in  the  clearest 
and  most  unmistakable  language  that  He  is  perfect  God  and 
perfect  Man.     Any  belittling  of  the  Humanity  with  the  idea  of 
exalting  the  Divinity  must  result  ultimately  in  belittling  the 
Divinity.     To  belittle  the  Humanity  is  as  much  of  a  heresy  as 
to  belittle  the  Divinity,  and  this  heresy  must  result  in  producing 
heretical  sects,  which,  in  their  endeavours  to  assert  what  they 
see  has  been  forgotten,  will  distort  and  exaggerate  that  one 
thing,  and  make  it  the  whole  of  their  creed,  to  the  exclusion 
of  all  other  truth.     Belittle  the  Humanity  of  our  Lord  by  trying 
to  take  the  Virgin  Mary  out  of  the  common  rank  of  woman, 
and  the  result  will  be,  as  it  has  been,  polytheism,  such  as  is 
practised  in  some  parts  of  the  Christian  Church  to-day,  where 
the  worship  of  Christ  the  Saviour  of  mankind  is  nominal ; 
because,  having  dehumanised  Him,  it  became  necessary  to 
put    in    His   place   more   human  divinities  whom   man   can 
approach  in  the  ordinary  needs  of  life.     Belittle  the  Divinity 
of  our  Lord  by  asserting  that  the  Scriptures  which  were  written 
through  men  are  complete,  infallible,  the  Word  of  God,  and 
you  have  practically  denied  the  unique  Divinity  of  our  Lord 


54  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

and  the  necessity  of  the  Incarnation ;  and  this  in  the  effort  to 
magnify  the  divine  by  minimising  the  human. 
^^  '.Vhen  we  are  told  in  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  that  the 
Spirit  of  God  brooded  over  the  face  of  chaos,  we  have  the 
prophecy  of  the  virgin  birth.  The  virgin  universe  conceived 
through  the  Spirit  of  God  Almighty,  and  the  Old  Testament 
is  the  story  of  the  pre-natal  growth,  if  I  may  so  speak,  of  the 
Divine  Child,  which,  in  the  fulness  of  time,  is  to  be  born  in 
the  form  of  Jesus  Christ,  of  the  Virgin  Mary  by  the  Holy 
Ghost. 

Below  the  statement  that  Christ  was  conceived  by  the  Holy 
Ghost  and  born  of  the  Virgin  Mary  lies  a  depth  of  truth  which 
is  altogether  lost  if  the  mind  is  allowed  to  dwell  exclusively  on 
-^  the  external  side  of  that  statement,  and  to  imagine  that  that  is 
all  that  it  covers.  Rather,  it  is  a  statement  of  the  whole  plan 
of  God's  dealing  with  man,  of  the  perfect  union  of  divinity 
and  humanity  which  is  to  be  found  in  the  whole  course  of  His 
dealing  with  the  world  from  the  creation  onward. 


CHAPTER  IV 

OUR  LORD'S  TREATMENT  OF  THE 
OLD  TESTAMENT 

PERHAPS  the  easiest  way  to  obtain  a  correct  view  of  our 
Lord's  treatment  of  the  Old  Testament  is  to  take  up  the 
Gospel  of  St.  Matthew,  and,  following  it  from  beginning  to 
end,  to  note  those  passages  in  which  reference  is  made  by  our 
Lord  to  the  Old  Testament,  comparing  them  with  parallel 
passages  in  other  Gospels,  so  far  as  such  parallels  exist.  It 
is  true  that  this  will  not  cover  every  single  use  of  the  Old 
Testament  made,  nor  will  it  present  to.  us  Christ's  use  in  a 
systematic  manner;  but  it  will,  I  think,  give  us  a  good  and 
sufficiently  complete  picture  for  the  purposes  of  argument 
from  His  use  to  the  proper  use  to  be  made  by  ourselves. 

The  story  of  the  Temptations,  contained  both  in  Matthew 
iv.  and  Luke  iv.,  may  be  regarded  as  a  summary  of  Christ's 
attitude  toward  earlier  views  of  divine  revelation,  held  both  by 
the  Jews  and  also  by  other  peoples.  In  Exodus  xix.  we  have 
a  description  of  the  theophany  at  Sinai.  The  mountain  is  to 
be  guarded  with  bounds  round  about,  because  "whosoever 
toucheth  the  mount  shall  be  surely  put  to  death."  The  pre- 
sence of  God  upon  the  mount  is  indicated  by  "  thunders  and 
lightnings,  and  a  thick  cloud,"  and  the  mount  was  "  altogether 
on  smoke,  because  the  Lord  descended  upon  it  in  fire,  and 
the  smoke  thereof  ascended  as  the  smoke  of  a  furnace,  and 
the  whole  mount  quaked  greatly."  And  the  Lord  bids  Moses 
to  "  go  down  and  charge  the  people,  lest  they  break  through 
unto  the  Lord  to  gaze,  and  many  of  them  perish.     And  let 

55 


56  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

the  priests  also,  who  come  near  to  the  Lord,  sanctify  them- 
selves, lest  the  Lord  break  forth  upon  them." 

At  the  time  of  our  Lord  this  was  commonly  regarded  among 
Jewish  theologians  as  the  highest  revelation  of  Himself  by 
God  to  man.  To  be  sure,  we  have  in  the  Prophets  indications 
of  a  higher  and  better  conception,  as  when  in  the  story  of 
Elijah  we  are  told  that  the  Lord  is  not  in  the  earthquake,  nor 
in  the  fire,  nor  in  the  thunder,  but  in  the  still  small  voice; 
or,  as  in  Jeremiah,  when  we  are  told  that  it  is  not  on  tables 
of  stone,  but  on  the  fleshly  tablets  of  the  heart  that  God 
really  writes  His  highest  law.  Nevertheless,  among  Jewish 
theologians  of  our  Lord's  time,  the  manifestation  on  Sinai 
was  considered  to  be  a  typical  and  the  highest  revelation  of 
God's  nature  made  to  man.  Now  the  general  conception  of 
a  divine  revelation  which  we  find  here  was  not  peculiar  to  the 
Jews.  It  is  the  view  of  the  way  in  which  God  must  manifest 
Himself  to  man  common  in  its  general  features  to  many 
religions,  and  you  can  parallel  the  essential  features  of  this 
theophany  out  of  the  theology  or  mythology  of  many  nations. 
This  being  regarded  as  the  highest  method  of  the  manifesta- 
tion of  God  to  man,  the  expectation  of  the  manner  of  the 
coming  of  the  Messiah  was  naturally  based  among  Jewish 
theologians  upon  this  general  conception  of  the  method  of 
manifestation  of  Divinity,  rather  than  upon  those  really  higher 
views  of  Divine  manifestation  referred  to  above,  which  are 
represented  in  many  prophetical  passages,  and  especially  in 
Isaiah  liii. 

In  His  attitude  toward  the  Temptations  our  Lord  expressly 
and  flatly  contradicts  this  conception  of  the  Jewish  theologians 
based  upon  Exodus  xix.  and  similar  passages.  The  devil  that 
comes  to  Him  in  the  theology  of  the  Jews  would  bid  Him 
cast  Himself  from  the  pinnacle  of  the  temple  and  descend 
upborne  by  angels.  That  theology  demands  of  Him  the 
same  general  method  of  manifestation  which  is  narrated  in 
Exodus  xix.  To  this  He  opposed  the  conception  of  the  Son 
of  Man,  of  God  in  man.  He  will  not  turn  the  stones  to 
bread,  He  will  not  cast  Himself  down  from  the  pinnacle  of 


OUR  LORD  AND  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  57 

the  temple,  He  will  not  seek  to  make  Himself  king  of  the 
nations  of  the  earth,  the  most  powerful  ruler  of  His  time,  as 
David  had  been.  The  highest  manifestation  of  God  to  man 
is,  according  to  our .  Lord,  the  manifestation  of  Himself  in 
man.  It  must  be  thoroughly  human,  and  the  Divine  must 
be  exhibited,  not  in  clouds  and  thunder  and  outward  mani- 
festations of  might  and  terror,  but  in  the  perfection  in  man 
of  the  divine  attributes  of  love  and  truth.  The  Temptations 
are  a  mystical  setting  forth  of  our  Lord's  position  in  this 
matter,  and  of  the  conflict  between  that  position  and  the 
conceptions  of  Jewish  theologians.  It  may  be  said  that  in 
a  broad  way,  not  merely  our  Lord's  attitude  as  described  in 
the  Temptations,  but  His  attitude  as  a  whole  as  described 
in  the  four  Gospels,  contradicts  the  conception  of  the  highest 
manifestation  of  the  Divine  contained  in  Exodus  xix.  God 
in  nature  is  what  Exodus  xix.  sets  forth ;  God  in  man  is  what 
our  Lord  in  the  New  Testament  sets  forth.  Not  that  God 
does  not  cause  the  portents  of  nature,  but  He  is  not  in  those 
in  the  sense  in  which  He  is  in  the  still  small  voice,  speak- 
ing within  the  hearts  of  men.  Comparatively  speaking,  the 
theophany  at  Sinai  is  a  low  conception  of  God.  The  presence 
of  God  is  to  be  sought  not  in  the  lightning  and  the  thunder- 
storm, where  the  Hebrews  in  common  with  other  peoples  had 
sought  for  it,  but  in  the  perfection  of  the  moral  attributes 
in  God's  highest  creation — man. 

To  turn  from  the  general  to  the  more  particular.  We  find 
in  the  story  of  the  Temptations  our  Lord  answering  the 
tempter  by  quotations  from  the  Old  Testament,  introduced 
by  the  words,  "  It  is  written."  I  wish  to  call  attention  to 
the  fact  that  this  is  a  phrase  which  may  be  used  not  only  of 
the  Old  Testament,  but  practically  of  any  writing,  and  that 
the  attitude  of  the  Jewish  mind  towards  the  Old  Testament  as 
an  ancient  written  document  was  in  part  at  least  the  same  as 
that  existing  everywhere  among  ancient  peoples  regarding 
written  documents,  and  which  you  will  find  at  the  present 
time  among  most  Orientals.  For  instance,  if  in  speaking  to 
an  ordinary  Oriental  of  the  Turkish   Empire  with  reference 


58  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

to  any  fact,  I  am  able  to  take  any  book  in  his  own  language, 
or  in  Arabic  if  he  is  a  Moslem — it  really  matters  very  little 
what — and  show  him  that  what  I  have  stated  is  written  in  this 
book,  it  will  have  upon  his  mind  almost  the  effect  of  proof. 
So  St.  Paul,  wishing  to  confirm  what  he  says  to  the  Athenians, 
is  reported  as  quoting  from  a  Stoic  poet  (Acts  xvii.  28,  "As 
certain  also  of  your  own  poets  have  said  "),  as  though  it  were 
Scripture,  because  that  for  which  he  could  refer  to  a  written 
document  had  a  double  force  to  the  minds  of  his  hearers, 
or  in  fact  was  regarded  by  most  of  them  as  proved  if  docu- 
mentary evidence  could  be  cited  for  it.  In  the  same  way, 
in  the  Epistle  of  St.  Jude  (v.  14),  we  find  the  quotation  from 
the  apocryphal  book  of  Enoch,  in  the  words,  "And  Enoch 
also,  the  seventh  from  Adam,  prophesied  of  this,"  etc.  One 
of  our  Lord's  expressions  as  quoted  in  the  Gospels  is,  "  It  is 
said  or  written  by  the  ancients." 

This  general  attitude  of  the  mind  towards  written  documents 
must  be  carefully  borne  in  mind  in  studying  the  quotations 
from  the  Old  Testament  in  the  New.  In  regard  to  our  Lord's 
own  quotations  I  really  do  not  need  to  enter  this  caveat ;  but 
in  the  consideration  of  the  use  which  St.  Matthew  and  other 
New  Testament  writers  make  of  the  Old  Testament  it  should 
be  very  carefully  borne  in  mind. 

The  next  passage  to  which  I  wish  to  call  attention  is  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount.  In  Matthew  v.  17  our  Lord  is  repre- 
sented as  saying,  "Think  not  that  I  am  come  to  destroy 
the  law  or  the  prophets  :  I  am  not  come  to  destroy,  but 
to  fulfil."  And  in  verse  18  it  is  added,  "For  verily  I  say 
unto  you,  Till  heaven  and  earth  pass,  one  jot  or  one  tittle 
shall  in  no  wise  pass  from  the  law,  till  all  be  fulfilled."  This 
is  frequently  quoted  as  an  assertion  of  what  is  ordinarily  known 
as  literal,  or  verbal,  inspiration  ;  as  though  every  jot  and  tittle 
of  the  words  of  the  Law  were  sacred  and  eternal.  But  our 
Lord's  treatment  of  the  Pentateuch  in  His  expositions  of  the 
Law,  as  recorded  in  that  same  document  of  discourses  which 
we  know  as  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  should  show  the 
most  casual  reader  that,  so  far  from   maintaining  any  such 


OUR  LORD  AND  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  59 

literal  inspiration,  our  Lord  unhesitatingly  condemns  and 
abolishes  those  portions  of  the  Law  and  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment as  a  whole  which  contradict  what  we  now  know  as  the 
moral  law,  the  law  of  love.  His  exposition  of  the  sixth  and 
seventh  commandments  shows  that  the  jots  and  tittles  of  the 
law  to  which  He  refers  are  of  a  moral,  not  a  formal  nature. 
The  law  must  be  obeyed  in  the  extremest  minutiae  of  its  moral 
application ;  but  the  moral  law,  and  that  only,  is  sacred  and 
eternal.  Whatever  was  written  by  Moses  or  by  those  of  olden 
times  which  is  not  consistent  with  that  moral  law  is  to  be  con- 
demned and  rejected. 

So  in  Matthew  v.  31  He  quotes  from  Deuteronomy  xxiv.  i 
the  words  (which  are  also  contained  in  substance  in  Jer.  iii.  i), 
"  Whosoever  shall  put  away  his  wife,  let  him  give  her  a  writing 
of  divorcement,"  and  affirms  unhesitatingly  that  this  is  not  the 
word  of  God,  but  in  contradiction  to  that  word :  "  But  I  say 
unto  you,  that  whosoever  shall  put  away  his  wife,  saving  for 
the  cause  of  fornication,  causeth  her  to  commit  adultery." 
That  is,  such  divorce  is  a  breach,  or  involves  a  breach,  of  the 
seventh  commandment  when  interpreted  according  to  its  spirit 
and  not  merely  its  letter.  There  is  no  question  as  to  our 
Lord's  position  in  this  matter,  for  not  only  is  the  passage 
contained  in  the  Gospel  according  to  St.  Matthew ;  it  appears 
also  in  the  other  two  synoptic  gospels,  and  is  again  taken  up 
more  at  length  in  Matthew  xix.,  where  our  Lord,  going  further 
still,  lays  down  monogamy  as  the  law  of  God,  deducing  it 
spiritually  from  the  story  of  the  creation,  and  asserting  it  as 
a  part  of  the  Divine  plan,  and  thereby  tacitly  passing  a  con- 
demnation on  Law  and  Prophets,  saints  and  seers  of  the  past. 
They  did  not  have  the  word  of  God  in  this  matter;  they 
were  in  error.  This  is  expressed  in  His  statement  that  the 
commandment  of  Deuteronomy  in  the  matter  of  divorce  was 
given  because  of  the  hardness  of  their  hearts ;  that  is  to  say, 
that  man's  knowledge  of  God's  will  depends  upon  the  con- 
dition of  his  own  heart.  If  the  heart  of  man  is  hard — that 
is,  ignorant,  wilful,  dark,  barbarous — his  conception  of  God 
must    be   accordingly.      What    He   is  reported  as  saying  in 


6o  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Matthew  xix.  S,  "  Moses  because  of  the  hardness  of  your 
hearts  suffered  you  to  put  away  your  wives,"  when  transferred 
in<-o  our  phraseology  means  nothing  more  nor  less  than, 
"  In  the  times  of  your  barbarity,  when  your  conceptions  of 
God  were  low  and  imperfect,  the  Law,  which  was  leading  you 
up  to  something  higher,  was  of  necessity  of  itself  low  and  im- 
perfect." Their  conception  of  God  was  imperfect,  and  hence 
their  conception  of  the  moral  law  was  imperfect. 

As  to  the  use  of  the  name  of  Moses  which  we  find  in  that 
nineteenth  chapter — I  would  say  in  passing  that  it  is  nothing 
more  than  a  technical  designation  by  which  the  Pentateuch 
was  known,  precisely  as  the  plays,  sonnets,  etc.,  of  Shakespeare 
are  known  to  us  by  the  term  "Shakespeare."  The  name  was 
given,  it  is  true,  because  of  the  belief,  generally  held,  that 
Moses  was  the  author  of  the  Pentateuch ;  but  the  use  of  the 
term  by  any  given  individual  may  be  a  mere  means  of  identi- 
fication of  a  given  passage,  and  does  not  in  itself  imply  the 
acceptance  by  that  individual  of  such  authorship,  any  more 
than  the  use  of  "Samuel"  as  the  designation  of  the  books 
of  Samuel  means  that  Samuel  was  their  author.  If  I  wish 
to  quote  from  Shakespeare,  I  quote,  "  Shakespeare  says,"  with- 
out anyone's  supposing  that  I  commit  myself  to  the  theory 
of  Shakesperian  authorship  for  that  particular  place  or  passage. 
The  matter  of  authorship  is  not  in  mind.  The  object  in  view 
is  identification  of  the  passage  quoted.  If  the  line  of  argu- 
ment which  treats  the  use  of  Moses  in  such  passages  as  an 
assertion  on  our  Lord's  part  of  the  Mosaic  authorship  were 
to  be  accepted,  then  logically  in  Matthew  v.  33,  where  our 
Lord  quotes  one  of  the  commandments  of  the  Decalogue, 
with  the  introduction,  "It  was  said  by  them  of  old  time," 
it  is  fair  to  argue  that  He  did  not  believe  that  this  was  by 
Moses. 

Continuing  our  Lord's  exposition  of  the  Law  as  recorded 
in  Matthew  v.  and  following  chapters,  we  find  in  chapter  v. 
38,  39,  these  words  :  "  Ye  have  heard  that  it  was  said,  An 
eye  for  an  eye,  and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth :  but  I  say  unto  you, 
That  ye  resist  not  him  that  is  evil,"  etc.     The  same  passage 


OUR  LORD  AND  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  6i 

appears  in  Luke  vi.  29.  Here,  again,  so  far  from  preserving 
the  jots  and  tittles  of  the  Law  in  the  verbal  sense,  our  Lord 
reverses  and  repudiates  the  Law.  It  is  worth  while  to  observe 
that  what  is  true  of  the  manner  of  the  theophany  at  Sinai  is 
also  true  of  the  lex  talioms.  It  is  in  no  sense  peculiar  to  the 
Hebrews.  We  find  the  same  law  in  actual  practice  among 
all  ancient  nations,  and  in  written  form  it  occurs  in  all  the 
early  systems  of  law ;  such  as  the  Laws  of  the  Ten  Tables, 
the  Laws  of  Solon,  the  Laws  of  Lycurgus,  the  Law  of  Manu, 
etc.  In  the  Old  Testament  it  appears  in  every  stratum  of  the 
legislation :  in  the  Book  of  the  Covenant  (Exod.  xxi.  24) ;  in 
Deuteronomy  (xix.  21);  and  in  Leviticus  (xxiv.  20). 

In  Matthew  v.  43  we  find  a  further  similar  passage.  Our 
Lord  says :  "Ye  have  heard  that  it  was  said.  Thou  shalt 
love  thy  neighbour,  and  hate  thine  enemy.  But  I  say  unto 
you.  Love  your  enemies,"  etc.  Here  the  words,  "Ye  have 
heard  that  it  was  said,"  do  not  introduce  the  quotation  of  any 
individual  passage  of  the  Old  Testament.  Our  Lord  is  con- 
tradicting the  general  spirit  of  many  passages  and  the  inferences 
that  had  been  drawn  from  them ;  and  also  reflecting  on  certain 
acts  of  Israel  and  its  leaders  which  are  recorded  without 
apparent  condemnation  in  the  Old  Testament.  In  Deutero- 
nomy xxiii.  6  the  commandment  with  regard  to  the  Ammonite 
and  the  Moabite  is,  "Thou  shalt  not  seek  their  peace  nor 
their  prosperity  all  thy  days  for  ever";  and  Psalms  Ixix.,  cix., 
etc.,  contain  imprecations  in  the  spirit  of  that  verse  of  Deutero- 
nomy. All  such  parts  of  the  Old  Testament  are  rejected  by 
our  Lord  as  not  of  God  in  the  sense  in  which  He  is  of  God. 

A  similar  rejection  of  the  Old  Testament  Law  by  our  Lord 
is  found  in  Matthew  xv.  11  ff.,  a  passage  which  occurs  also  in 
Mark  vii.  15-19.  The  Pharisees  and  scribes  have  complained 
because  our  Lord's  disciples  do  not  follow  the  school  rules  in 
regard  to  clean  and  unclean,  failing  to  wash  their  hands  before 
they  eat.  Our  Lord,  starting  from  this  as  a  basis,  goes  on  to 
lay  down  the  spiritual  law  of  clean  and  unclean,  and  in  doing 
so  demolishes  completely  not  only  the  structure  that  the 
scribes  had  built  upon  the  Old  Testament,  but  also  the  Old 


62  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Testament  law  of  clean  and  unclean.  The  apostles  are  very 
much  astonished,  and  cannot  believe  that  He  means  what  He 
says  in  a  literal  sense,  so  that  "  Peter  answered  and  said  unto 
Him,  Declare  unto  us  this  parable." 

Indeed,  even  after  our  Lord's  Ascension  His  meaning  was 
not  grasped  for  many  years.  St.  Peter  was  the  first  to  realise 
His  meaning  in  the  vision  at  Joppa,  but  even  then  his  Jewish 
prejudices  were  too  strong  for  him  to  put  the  teaching  into 
practice  with  any  degree  of  consistency.  Nevertheless,  our 
Lord's  statement,  as  quoted  both  by  St.  Matthew  and  St.  Mark, 
is  sufficiently  explicit :  "  Not  that  which  entereth  into  the 
mouth  defileth  a  man,  but  that  which  proceedeth  out  of  the 
mouth."  Deuteronomy  xiv.  and  Leviticus  xi.  both  go  by  the 
board.  The  peculiar  holiness  of  Daniel  for  not  eating  the 
food  of  the  Chaldeans  (Dan.  i.)  ceases  to  exist.  In  point  of 
fact,  the  notion  of  clean  and  unclean,  as  contained  in  Deutero- 
nomy xiv.  and  Leviticus  xi.  and  glorified  in  Daniel  i.,  was 
common  to  the  Hebrews  with  the  nations  about  them.  Every 
one  of  these  had  its  law  of  clean  and  unclean,  and  every 
nation  ascribed  these  laws  of  clean  and  unclean  to  its  god. 
Our  Lord  seizes  on  the  spirit  of  the  law  behind  the  letter. 
There  is  a  clean  and  unclean ;  but  such  laws  as  these  that 
have  been  promulgated  in  the  name  of  My  Father,  "Thou 
shalt  not  eat  oysters,  or  swine's  flesh,  or  camels,  or  the  like, 
because  they  are  unclean,"  are  not  the  law  of  My  Father 
which  is  in  heaven ;  "  For  not  that  which  entereth  into  the 
mouth  defileth  a  man,  but  that  which  proceedeth  out  of  the 
mouth,  this  defileth  a  man."  Not  one  jot  or  one  tittle  of  the 
Law  of  God  shall,  or  can,  pass  away,  but  the  notions  of  the 
Jews,  as  much  as  those  of  the  Greeks  and  Arabs  and  Syrians 
and  Babylonians,  were  all  alike  overturned  by  Him  Who  came 
to  reveal  the  perfect  will  of  a  spiritual  God.  Compare  with 
this  treatment  of  divorce,  lex  talionis,  clean  and  unclean,  etc., 
our  Lord's  treatment  of  the  question  of  place  of  worship,  in 
the  conversation  with  the  woman  of  Samaria,  as  recorded 
in  John  iv.  He  refutes  and  repudiates  Law  and  Prophets 
alike  in    His  denial  of  the  special  sanctity  of  the  Temple 


OUR  LORD  AND  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  63 

at  Jerusalem  and  in  His  assertion  that  "  neither  in  this 
mountain  nor  in  Jerusalem  shall  ye  worship  the  Father." 

Turning  back  to  Matthew  xi.  10,  we  find  our  Lord  quoting 
as  a  prophecy  of  John  the  Baptist,  Malachi  iii.  i,  and  at 
the  same  time  denying  the  literal  truth  of  the  words  of  the 
prophet  as  contained  in  iv.  5.  Malachi  had  said,  "Behold, 
I  will  send  you  Elijah  the  prophet,  before  the  great  and 
terrible  day  of  the  Lord  come " ;  and  the  Jews,  holding  the 
Old  Testament  to  be  literally  and  verbally  inspired,  expected 
to  see  Elijah  come.  Our  Lord,  in  asserting  that  St.  John  was 
Elijah,  practically  affirmed  that  the  prophets  were  not  inspired 
literally  and  verbally,  that  their  inspiration  was  of  a  spiritual 
nature.  What  Malachi  looked  for  in  the  way  of  a  preparation 
for  the  coming  of  the  great  and  terrible  day  of  the  Lord  was 
fulfilled  in  the  work  of  John  the  Baptist.  No  more  literal  fulfil- 
ment of  Malachi's  words  was  to  be  expected.  Literally,  Malachi's 
prophecy  was  untrue ;  spiritually  interpreted,  it  was  true. 

Turning  to  Matthew  xii.  ^S  K,  we  come  to  the  famous 
passage  of  the  sign  of  Jonah,  which  is  so  often  claimed  as 
an  assertion  on  our  Lord's  part  of  the  historical  fact  of  the 
swallowing  and  vomiting  up  alive  of  Jonah  by  a  great  fish, 
as  told  in  that  noble  parable  of  the  Book  of  Jonah.  To 
begin  with,  the  principle  on  which  such  a  meaning  is  drawn 
from  our  Lord's  words  is  in  itself  false.  I  have  never  found 
occasion  to  make  any  argument  from  what  is  known  as  the 
kenosis.  The  question  of  the  limitation  of  our  Lord's  under- 
standing as  a  man  has  never  seemed  to  me  to  be  really  in- 
volved in  any  of  the  critical  questions  with  regard  to  His 
use  of  the  Old  Testament.  He  is  compelled  by  the  conditions 
of  those  to  whom  He  speaks  to  speak  to  them  in  their  own 
language.  He  cannot  speak  Greek  to  Hebrews,  nor  can 
He  speak  in  a  twentieth-century  tongue  to  people  of  the 
first  century.  He  cannot  use  the  language  of  the  Copernican 
system  to  those  whose  whole  idea  of  the  universe  is  based 
on  the  Ptolemaic  theory;  nor  can  He  speak  with  the  tongue 
of  the  higher  critics  to  men  who  have  not  the  slightest  con- 
ception of  the  ideas  of  the  higher  criticism. 


64  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Without  touching  the  question  of  kenosis^  we  find  a  limita- 
tion outside  of  Himself  in  the  conditions  in  which  He  is 
labouring.  If  He  wishes  to  quote  the  Pentateuch,  He  must 
quote  it  as  Moses ;  if  He  wishes  to  speak  about  the  changes 
of  day  and  night  consequent  upon  the  movement  of  the  earth 
on  its  axis,  He  must  speak,  in  order  to  be  understood,  of 
the  "  rising  and  setting  of  the  sun  " ;  and  if  He  wishes  to  draw 
a  moral  lesson  out  of  the  stories  of  the  Old  Testament,  He 
cannot  enter  into  the  question  of  their  literal,  historical 
accuracy,  but,  without  opening  that  question  at  all,  He  must 
refer  to  them  as  though  they  were  facts,  precisely  as  everyone 
else  did.  No  teaching  could  be  derived  from  our  Lord's 
words  in  such  matters,  unless  He  were  to  state  explicitly, 
which  He  does  not,  that  an  object  of  His  citation  is  to 
affirm  the  historical  character  of  the  fact  alluded  to.  To 
base  an  argument  as  to  His  belief  in  a  given  case  solely  on 
the  fact  that  He  uses  the  ordinary  language  of  His  time  and 
country  is  to  build  upon  false  principles.  But  in  this  particular 
case  a  comparative  study  of  the  Gospels  seems  to  make  it 
probable  that  our  Lord  never  uttered  the  words  in  question. 

In  Luke  xi.  29  ff.  we  are  told  that  when  the  multitude 
were  gathered  together,  our  Lord  began  to  say,  "  This  genera- 
tion is  an  evil  generation ;  it  seeketh  after  a  sign,  and  there 
shall  no  sign  be  given  it  but  the  sign  of  Jonah;  for  even 
as  Jonah  became  a  sign  unto  the  Ninevites,  so  also  shall 
the  Son  of  Man  be  to  this  generation.  The  queen  of  the 
south  shall  rise  up  in  the  judgment  with  the  men  of  this 
generation,  and  shall  condemn  them  :  for  she  came  from  the 
ends  of  the  earth  to  hear  the  wisdom  of  Solomon  ;  and,  behold, 
a  greater  than  Solomon  is  here.  The  men  of  Nineveh  shall 
stand  up  in  the  judgment  with  this  generation,  and  shall 
condemn  it :  for  they  repented  at  the  preaching  of  Jonah ; 
and,  behold,  a  greater  than  Jonah  is  here."  This  passage  is 
perfectly  clear.  "The  sign  of  Jonah,"  to  which  our  Lord 
refers,  is  not  the  sign  of  his  being  swallowed  by  a  great  fish, 
and  vomited  up  alive  after  three  days,  but  that  in  regard  to 
which  he  was  a  sign  to  the  Ninevites.      According  to  the 


OUR  LORD  AND  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    65 

narrative  in  the  Book  of  Jonah,  the  Ninevites  heard  nothing 
of  Jonah's  adventures.  He  came  to  them  to  declare  against 
them  the  judgment  of  God.  They  accepted  the  sign  that  God 
was  wroth  with  them  for  their  evil  doings,  and  repented  and 
were  saved,  heathen  though  they  were.  He,  Christ,  has  come 
to  the  Jews  with  a  similar  message  from  God.  He  is  a  similar 
sign,  but  they  have  rejected  Him.  That  this  is  the  meaning 
of  the  passage  is  shown  by  the  further  reference  to  Solomon 
and  the  queen  of  Sheba.  The  whole  tone  of  the  passage 
reminds  one  of  the  comparison  by  our  Lord  of  Capernaum, 
Chorazin,  and  Bethsaida  with  Sodom  and  Gomorrah ;  of 
unbelieving,  self-satisfied  Jews  with  the  Gentiles  whom  they 
despised. 

The  passage  in  St.  Matthew's  Gospel  is  not  equally  clear. 
There  we  are  told  that  certain  of  the  scribes  and  Pharisees 
answered  Him,  saying,  "Master,  we  would  see  a  sign  from 
Thee.  But  He  answered  and  said  unto  them.  An  evil  and 
adulterous  generation  seeketh  after  a  sign ;  and  there  shall  no 
sign  be  given  to  it,  but  the  sign  of  the  prophet  Jonah.  (For  as 
Jonah  was  three  days  and  three  nights  in  the  belly  of  the 
whale,  so  must  the  Son  of  Man  be  three  days  and  three  nights 
in  the  heart  of  the  earth.)  The  men  of  Nineveh  shall  stand 
up  in  the  judgment  with  this  generation,  and  shall  condemn 
it:  for  they  repented  at  the  preaching  of  Jonah;  and,  behold,  a 
greater  than  Jonah  is  here.  The  queen  of  the  south  shall  rise 
up  in  the  judgment  with  this  generation,  and  shall  condemn 
it :  for  she  came  from  the  ends  of  the  earth  to  hear  the  wisdom 
of  Solomon ;  and,  behold,  a  greater  than  Solomon  is  here." 

It  will  be  observed  that  in  a  slightly  different  order  the 
Gospel  according  to  St.  Matthew  has  three  verses  identical 
with  those  in  St.  Luke,  namely,  the  statement  that  an  evil  and 
adulterous  generation  seeks  after  a  sign,  and  shall  have  no  sign 
given  it  but  the  sign  of  the  prophet  Jonah ;  the  statement  that 
the  men  of  Nineveh  shall  stand  up  in  judgment,  and  condemn 
it,  for  they  repented  at  the  preaching  of  Jonah ;  and  the  state- 
ment that  the  queen  of  the  south  shall  rise  up  in  judgment 
with  this  generation,  and  condemn  it,  because  she  came  from 


66  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND   NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

the  most  distant  part  of  the  earth  to  hear  the  wisdom  of 
Solomon. 

But  there  is  a  fourth  verse  in  the  Gospel  according  to 
St.  Matthew  which  is  not  in  the  Gospel  according  to  St.  Luke, 
and  that  is  the  statement,  "  For  as  Jonah  was  three  days  and 
three  nights  in  the  belly  of  the  whale,  so  shall  the  Son  of  Man 
be  three  days  and  three  nights  in  the  heart  of  the  earth." 
Comparing  the  two  passages,  and  considering  what  the  con- 
nexion of  thought  is,  it  seems  to  me  quite  clear  that  this 
verse  is  an  addition  of  St.  Matthew's.  A  comparison  of 
St.  Matthew's  reports  of  our  Lord's  sayings  and  doings  with  the 
treatment  of  St.  Mark  or  St.  Luke  will  show  that  St.  Matthew 
always  seeks  to  find  a  Bible  verse  appropriate  to  the  occasion, 
which  he  introduces  into  the  narrative.  For  an  instance  of 
this  compare  the  accounts  of  the  parable  of  the  Sower,  as 
given  in  the  two  Gospels  according  to  St.  Matthew  and  St.  Luke. 
In  Luke  viii.  lo  we  read,  "And  He  said,  Unto  you  it  is  given 
to  know  the  mysteries  of  the  Kingdom  of  God :  but  to  others 
in  parables ;  that  seeing  they  might  not  see,  and  hearing  they 
might  not  understand  " — words  in  which  our  Lord  clearly 
quotes  the  sense  of  Isaiah  vii.  9.  With  this  agrees  sub- 
stantially Mark  iv.  11,  12.  Turning  to  Matthew  xiii.  13  we 
read,  "  Therefore  speak  I  to  them  in  parables :  because  they 
seeing  see  not ;  and  hearing  hear  not ;  neither  do  they  under- 
•stand";  and  then  there  is  added,  in  verse  14,  these  words, 
"And  in  them  is  fulfilled  the  prophecy  of  Isaiah,  which  says, 
By  hearing  ye  shall  hear,  and  shall  not  understand  ;  and  seeing 
ye  shall  see,  and  not  perceive."  Does  St.  Matthew  mean  to 
put  these  words  into  the  mouth  of  our  Lord?  It  seems 
to  me  that  his  method  of  reporting  our  Lord  is  this :  that 
where  our  Lord  referred  to  the  Old  Testament  he  seeks  to 
give  the  quotation,  and — which  is  perfectly  proper  according 
to  the  ancient  idea  of  an  historian  in  recording  the  words  of 
a  speaker — he  sometimes  puts  the  passage  which  he  himself 
has  taken  from  the  Old  Testament  into  the  mouth  of  our 
Lord. 

Where  he  is  dealing  with  the  acts  of  our  Lord  the  Old 


OUR  LORD  AND  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  67 

Testament  verses  cannot  be  put  into  His  mouth,  but  they  are 
introduced  into  the  narrative  with  the  statement  that  whatever 
was  done,  was  done  "in  order  that  it  might  be  fulfilled  which 
was  written,  saying,"  etc.  In  Matthew  xxi.  2  ff.,  where  our 
Lord  has  told  the  disciples  to  go  into  the  village  over  against 
them,  and  to  take  a  she-ass  which  they  will  find  there,  He  says 
to  them,  "  If  any  man  say  ought  unto  you,  ye  shall  say,  The 
Lord  hath  need  of  them ;  and  he  shall  send  them.  Now  this 
is  come  to  pass  that  it  might  be  fulfilled  which  was  spoken  by 
the  prophet,  saying,  Tell  ye  the  daughter  of  Zion,  Behold,  thy 
King  cometh  unto  thee,  meek,  and  sitting  upon  an  ass,  and 
upon  a  colt  the  foal  of  an  ass."  The  quotation  from  Zechariah 
ix.  9  might  be  supposed  to  be  put,  according  to  the  Revised 
Version,  into  our  Lord's  mouth.  When  we  turn  to  Mark  xi. 
and  to  Luke  xix.,  and  read  the  same  narrative,  we  do  not  find 
the  quotation  used  at  all.  The  Authorised  Version  gives  the 
verse  in  question  as  from  St.  Matthew,  and  not  from  our  Lord 
— "  Now  all  this  was  done,  that  it  might  be  fulfilled  which  was 
spoken  by  the  prophet."  There  is,  in  fact,  a  certain  ambiguity 
in  the  phraseology  of  St.  Matthew,  for  he  would  not  feel  the 
necessity  for  making  the  distinction  which  we  make  between 
a  quotation  inserted  by  himself  and  one  actually  used  by  our 
Lord. 

So,  in  the  passage  with  regard  to  the  sign  of  the  prophet 
Jonah,  St.  Matthew  has  simply  introduced  a  statement  of  his 
own  which  summarises  that  which  is  to  all  readers,  at  first 
sight  at  least,  the  most  striking  thing  in  the  story  of  Jonah, 
and  this  statement  is  put  in  the  midst  of  our  Lord's  words,  so 
that  it  seems  to  the  modern  reader  to  be  put  into  the  mouth 
of  our  Lord  in  the  same  way  as  in  the  other  cases  to  which  I 
have  referred.  This  verse,  therefore,  as  the  comparison  of 
passages  shows,  is  not  to  be  taken  as  the  words  of  our  Lord, 
but  as  the  explanatory  comment  of  St.  Matthew,  who  sees  in 
the  story  of  Jonah  a  sign  of  our  Lord's  Resurrection.  Use  a 
modern  device,  bracket  the  verse,  and  the  difficulty  vanishes 
at  once. 

The  designation  of  the  sources  of  our  Lord's  quotations 


68  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

from  the  Old  Testament  in  the  different  Gospels  is  an  interest- 
ing and  rather  curious  study.  In  Matthew  xv.  4  our  Lord  is 
quoted  as  saying,  "  For  God  said,  Honour  thy  father  and  thy 
mother  :  and,  He  that  speaketh  evil  of  father  or  mother,  let  him 
die  the  death."  The  same  passage  is  quoted  in  Mark  vii.  10 
in  this  form :  "  For  Moses  said,  Honour  thy  father  and  thy 
mother :  and,  He  that  speaketh  evil  of  father  or  mother,  let 
him  die  the  death."  The  intention  is  to  quote  the  passage  as 
of  divine  authority.  In  the  Gospel  according  to  St.  Mark  it  is 
quoted  with  the  technical  designation  of  "  the  Law,"  that  is, 
Moses.  In  the  Gospel  according  to  St.  Matthew,  it  is  quoted 
with  reference  to  the  source  of  inspiration  of  the  Law,  namely, 
God.  But  what  were  the  words  our  Lord  used?  Did  He 
say,  "  God  said,"  or  "  Moses  said "  ?  I  do  not  suppose  we 
know,  and  it  is  a  matter  of  complete  indifference.  He  might 
with  perfect  propriety  have  used  either  form.  There  is  a 
similar  case  in  Matthew  xxii.  23-33,  where,  in  our  Lord's 
answer  to  the  argument  of  the  Sadducees,  Exodus  iii.  6  is 
quoted.  St.  Matthew  represents  our  Lord  as  citing  it  with 
the  introduction,  "  Have  ye  not  read  that  which  was  spoken 
unto  you  by  God,  saying,  .  .  .  ? "  In  the  parallel  passage  in 
Mark  xii.  18  ff.  our  Lord  is  represented  as  saying,  "Have  ye 
not  read  in  the  book  of  Moses,  in  the  Bush,  how  God 
spake?"  and  in  the  same  passage  in  the  Gospel  according 
to  St.  Luke  (xx.  27  ff.)  our  Lord's  words  are  represented  to 
be,  "But  that  the  dead  are  raised,  even  Moses  shewed  in 
the  Bush." 

The  important  truth  in  these  cases  is  the  Divine  authority  of 
"the  statement,  and  those  who  report  the  words  of  our  Lord 
agree  substantially  in  that,  although  they  differ  so  markedly  in 
the  manner  in  which  they  introduce  the  quotations.  These 
passages  contirm  my  previous  assertion  that  we  cannot  lay  any 
stress  on  the  use  of  such  formulae  as  "  Moses  said,"  etc. 

With  regard  to  the  difference  between  St.  Matthew  and  the 
other  Gospels  in  the  matter  of  Old  Testament  quotations,  I 
may  here  refer  to  Matthew  xxiii.  35,  "That  upon  you  may 
come  all  the  righteous  blood  shed  on  the  earth,  from  the 


OUR  LORD  AND  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  69 

blood  of  righteous  Abel  unto  the  blood  of  Zacharias  son  of 
Barachias,  whom  ye  slew  between  the  sanctuary  and  the  altar." 
Now  in  2  Chronicles  xxiv.  20,  21  we  are  told  that  a  certain 
Zacharias  son  of  Jehoiada  the  priest  was  stoned  with  stones 
at  the  command  of  the  king,  in  the  court  of  the  house  of  the 
Lord.  If  this  is  a  quotation  from  Chronicles,  it  is  incorrect, 
and  either  he  that  quoted  it  or  the  chronicler  is  in  error.  If 
it  refers,  as  some  of  the  best  commentators  suppose,  not  to 
the  event  recorded  in  Chronicles,  but  to  the  murder  in  the 
midst  of  the  Temple,  by  two  of  the  most  daring  of  the  zealots 
during  the  Jewish  war,  of  "  Zachariah  son  of  Baruch,"  recorded 
by  Josephus  {Bell.  iv.  6,  4),  then  it  occurred  a  generation 
after  our  Lord's  time.  Did  our  Lord  use  these  words  ?  It 
is  noteworthy  that  this  whole  twenty-third  chapter,  the  chapter 
of  the  denunciations,  is  wanting  in  St.  Mark  and  St.  Luke.  It 
looks  as  though,  in  the  same  way  that  St.  Matthew  gathered  a 
great  amount  of  similar  material  together  in  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  so  he  had  gathered  together  here  all  the  scattered 
words  of  denunciation  spoken  at  one  time  or  another,  and 
edited  them  after  his  manner  as  one  discourse,  with  such 
references  to  the  Old  Testament  (and  possibly  even  to  recent 
contemporary  history)  as  he  could  make.  Such  passages  as 
this  thirty-fifth  verse,  I  should  suppose,  are  not  to  be  taken 
as  words  of  our  Lord,  but  are  due  rather  to  St.  Matthew's 
manner  of  supporting  what  he  reports  of  our  Lord's  words  by 
Old  Testament  citations  and  the  like,  which  he  weaves  in  as 
though  they  were  part  of  the  discourse. 

In  Matthew  xxiv.  15  we  read,  "When  therefore  ye  see  the 
abomination  of  desolation,  which  was  spoken  of  by  Daniel 
the  prophet,  standing  in  the  holy  place  (whoso  readeth,  let  him 
understand),"  etc.  In  the  same  chapter  {v.  36  f.)  we  are  told 
that  no  one  knows  of  the  day  of  the  second  coming,  not  even 
the  angels  of  heaven,  nor  the  Son,  but  the  Father  only;  and 
as  were  the  days  of  Noah,  so  shall  be  the  coming  of  the  Son 
of  Man.  In  Mark  xiii.  14,  the  parallel  passage,  we  do  not 
find  any  formal  citation  of  the  prophet  Daniel,  although  we 
find  the  reference  to  the  abomination  of  desolation,  and  the 


JO  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

whole  of  the  reference  to  the  days  of  Noah  is  omitted.  In 
St.  Luke's  account  of  the  same  (xxi.)  we  find  neither  the  refer- 
ence to  Daniel  nor  the  reference  to  Noah.  The  argument 
would  seem  to  be  that  the  quotation  of  Daniel  and  the 
citation  of  the  story  of  Noah  are  part  of  St.  Matthew's  regular 
method  of  reinforcing  or  explaining  our  Lord's  words  by 
references  connecting  them  with  the  Old  Testament. 

In  Matthew  xix.  16-22  we  find  the  story  of  the  man  who 
came  to  ask  the  Master  what  good  thing  he  should  do  to  have 
eternal  life.  Our  Lord  quotes  to  him  the  sixth,  seventh, 
eighth,  ninth,  and  fifth  commandments  from  the  Decalogue, 
following  this  with  a  citation  and  application  of  Leviticus  xix. 
18,  "Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbour  as  thyself,"  which  citation 
is  put  along  with  the  commandments  of  the  Decalogue,  as 
though  it  were  itself  one  of  them.  The  parallel  passages, 
in  the  Gospels  according  to  St.  Mark  and  St.  Luke,  omit  the 
citation  from  Leviticus  xix.  18.  (St.  Luke  differs  from  the 
other  Gospels  in  quoting  the  commandments  after  the  order  of 
the  Septuagint,  instead  of  the  Hebrew  order,  that  is,  placing 
the  seventh  commandment  before  the  sixth.)  Now  Leviticus 
xix.  18  is  a  favourite  passage  with  our  Lord,  and  it  seems 
probable  that  in  this  case  St.  Matthew  has  introduced,  along 
with  the  commandments  which  our  Lord  quotes,  that  summary 
of  those  commandments  which  our  Lord  used  on  other 
occasions. 

In  Matthew  xxii.  36-40  one  of  the  Pharisees  asks  our  Lord, 
"  Master,  which  is  the  great  commandment  in  the  Law  ?  "  and 
our  Lord  is  quoted  as  answering  him  by  a  citation,  not  from 
the  Decalogue,  but  from  Deuteronomy  vi.  5,  "Thou  shalt  love 
the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart,"  etc,  and  Leviticus  xix. 
18,  "Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbour  as  thyself."  He  turns  to 
the  spirit  behind  the  Decalogue,  not  to  the  Decalogue.  In 
the  parallel  passage  in  the  Gospel  according  to  St.  Mark 
Deuteronomy  vi.  4,  "  Hear,  O  Israel:  The  Lord  our  God  is  one 
Lord,"  is  quoted,  as  well  as  Deuteronomy  vi.  5  ;  and  this 
is  one  of  the  few  passages  where  there  is  more  of  the  Old 
Testament   put   into   our   Lord's   mouth    in    the    Gospel    of 


OUR  LORD  AND  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  71 

St.  Mark  than  in  the  Gospel  according  to  St.  Matthew.  Strictly 
speaking,  there  is  no  parallel  passage  in  the  Gospel  according 
to  St.  Luke,  but  in  Luke  x.  25  we  find  on  another  occasion 
a  certain  lawyer  represented  as  tempting  our  Lord,  saying, 
"  Master,  what  shall  I  do  to  inherit  eternal  life  ?  "  whereupon 
our  Lord  quotes  Deuteronomy  vi.  5  and  Leviticus  xix.  18, 
just  as  He  is  represented  as  doing  upon  this  occasion  in 
St.  Matthew  and  St.  Mark. 

It  is  worthy  of  note  that  our  Lord,  in  His  quotation  of 
Leviticus  xix.  18,  "Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbour  as  thyself," 
gives  a  very  different  sense  to  those  words  from  that  which 
they  have  in  the  connexion  in  which  they  appear  in  the  Book 
of  Leviticus.  The  commandment  there  concerns  the  Israelite 
only ;  that  is,  the  neighbour  referred  to  is  the  Israelite.  It  is 
part  of  a  series  which  directs  a  different  treatment  of  the 
Israelite  from  that  of  the  foreigner.  Our  Lord  takes  the  spirit 
of  these  commandments  and  expands  their  force  by  changing 
the  conception  of  God's  relations  to  man,  and  hence  of  man's 
relations  to  his  fellow-men.  What  in  the  school  of  the  Law 
they  learned  to  do  and  to  feel  toward  their  Israelitish  brothers 
they  are  now  ordered  to  do  and  to  feel  toward  all  men, 
because  all  men  are  brothers,  children  of  one  Father  which  is 
in  Heaven.  It  is  a  spiritual,  not  a  literal  interpretation  of  the 
Law.     Indeed,  it  rejects  and  repudiates  the  letter. 

I  have  noticed  the  method  in  which  St.  Matthew  uses  the 
Old  Testament  and  his  efforts  to  connect  everything  with  the 
Old  Testament.  It  may  be  remarked  in  passing  that  this 
is  more  noticeable  where  he  is  recording  the  events  of  our 
Lord's  life  than  where  he  is  recording  His  words,  and  in 
the  introductory  chapters  of  his  Gospel  we  are  almost  amazed 
at  the  method  of  treating  the  Old  Testament  which  we  find. 
He  endeavours  to  connect  everything  in  our  Lord's  life  in 
one  way  or  another  with  some  particular  passage  in  the  Old 
Testament ;  accordingly  a  passage  must  be  found  which  shall 
connect  our  Lord  in  some  way  with  the  town  of  Nazareth. 
Now  in  Isaiah  xi.  i  we  read,  "And  there  cometh  forth  a  shoot 
from  the  stock  of  Jesse,  and  a  Branch  {nezer)  from  his  roots 


73  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

beareth  fruit."  Here  the  Messiah  is  called  a  nezer  (branch), 
therefore,  St.  Matthew  says,  it  was  prophesied  that  "  He  shall  be 
a  Nazarene."  It  must  be  understood  that  there  is  absolutely 
no  connexion  between  nezer^  meaning  branch,  and  the  word 
Nazarene.     The  similarity  in  outward  form  is  a  pure  accident. 

I  might  call  attention  at  this  point  to  the  tendency  which 
showed  itself  very  early  in  the  handling  of  the  Scriptures  to 
introduce  modifications  or  explanations  into  the  text  on  the 
part  of  those  who  transcribed  it.  So,  in  Matthew  v.  22,  the 
received  text  reads,  "  But  I  say  unto  you  that  wliosoever  shall 
be  angry  with  his  brother  without  a  cause  shall  be  in  danger 
of  the  judgment."  The  correct  text  has  no  "without  a  cause," 
but  simply  says,  "  Whosoever  is  angry  with  his  brother  is  in 
danger  of  the  judgment."  The  person  who  wrote  in  the  words 
"  without  a  cause "  did  not  appreciate  the  whole  meaning 
of  our  Lord's  words.  But  evidently  the  body  of  the  Church 
wTiS  in  sympathy  w^ith  him  in  feeling  the  need  of  a  modification 
of  our  Lord's  very  radical  statement,  and  consequently  his 
correction,  or  marginal  note,  crept  into  the  text  in  ordinary 
use.  A  better-known  example  of  text  corruption  is  i  John 
V.  7,  where  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  is  asserted  in  the 
famous  passage  of  the  three  that  bear  record  in  heaven. 
Another  instance  is  the  doxology  to  the  Lord's  Prayer,  which 
appears  in  the  received  text  in  St.  Matthew's  version  of  the 
prayer.  It  is  now  traced  back,  I  believe,  to  the  North  of 
Africa.  It  was  a  doxology  added  to  the  prayer  in  liturgical 
use,  and  from  that  it  crept  into  the  text. 

A  consideration  of  the  methods  of  early  WTiters  in  the 
handling  of  the  text  should  make  us  extremely  cautious  in 
regard  to  the  treatment  of  mere  words  in  the  Bible,  as  though 
the  form  in  which  they  have  come  down  to  us  were  literally 
accurate.  The  whole  literary  conception  of  the  writers  and 
transcribers  of  Bible  texts  was  very  different  from  our  own — so 
different  that  we  cannot  seek  from  Bible  writers  verbal  accuracy 
of  the  sort  which  we  demand  at  the  present  day,  as  I  think  is 
brought  out  very  fully  the  instant  we  compare  one  gospel 
narrative  with  another. 


OUR  LORD  AND  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  73 

In  one  case  a  quotation  from  the  Gospel  according  to 
St.  Mark  differs  from  a  quotation  in  St.  Matthew  and  St.  Luke 
in  such  a  manner  as  to  suggest  a  bias  on  the  part  of  St.  Mark. 
Matthew  (xxi.  13)  and  Luke  (xix.  46),  in  narrating  our  Lord's 
purification  of  the  Temple,  when  He  drove  out  them  that 
bought  and  sold  therein,  report  Him  as  quoting  from  Isaiah  Ivi.  7 
the  words,  "  Mine  house  shall  be  called  an  house  of  prayer." 
St.  Mark  (xi.  17)  gives  the  quotation  in  a  fuller  form,  "house  of 
prayer  for  all  peoples."  I  am  inclined  to  suppose  the  quotation 
as  reported  by  St.  Matthew  and  St.  Luke  more  likely  to  have 
been  that  used  by  our  Lord,  and  that  St.  Mark,  knowing  of  the 
additional  words  which  belonged  to  the  passage  in  the  original, 
and  being  interested  in  precisely  that  aspect  of  the  gospel 
which  made  it  a  gospel  for  all  peoples,  gave  the  quotation  in 
this  fuller  form  as  spoken  by  our  Lord. 

In  Matthew  xxi,  42,  Psalm  cxviii.  22,  23  is  quoted  under  the 
designation  "scriptures":  "Jesus  saith  unto  them.  Did  ye 
never  read  in  the  scriptures,"  etc.  St.  Mark  (xii.  10)  quotes 
the  same  passage  under  the  same  title  ;  but  St.  Luke  (xx.  17) 
quotes  verse  22  only,  with  the  preface,  "What  then  is  this  that 
is  written  ?  "  It  is  a  written  thing,  a  thing  that  is  handed  down 
in  writing;  that  is  the  thought  which  lies  in  the  designation 
"  scripture,"  to  an  extent  which  we  do  not  always  recognise. 
"  It  is  written  " — anything  that  was  written  in  times  long  gone 
by  has  a  value  and  a  sanction  which  sets  it  aside  from  the 
things  of  to-day. 

I  have  already  referred  to  our  Lord's  quotation  of  Exodus  iii.  6 
and  the  discussion  with  the  Sadducees  concerning  the  resurrec- 
tion of  the  dead,  reported  in  Matthew  xxii.,  Mark  xii.,  and 
Luke  XX.  It  will  be  observed  that  in  the  discussions  reported  in 
these  chapters  our  Lord  meets,  one  after  the  other,  different 
opponents,  accepts  their  own  basis  of  argument,  applies  their 
own  method,  and  defeats  them.  Our  Lord's  object  here  is  the 
same  as  that  in  the  discussion  with  the  Pharisees,  recorded  in 
the  same  chapter  (Matt.  xxii.  41-46).  In  the  latter  place  He 
undertakes  to  show  the  Pharisees,  according  to  their  own 
methods,  from  what  they  accept,  that  their  view  of  the  Messiah 


74  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

is  incorrect.  Here  He  treats  the  Sadducees  in  the  same  way. 
In  neither  place,  surely,  can  our  Lord  be  understood  as  saying 
that  this  is  the  proper  interpretation  of  the  Old  Testament. 
What  He  does  say  is,  "  You  accept  this,  now  observe  the 
logical  results ;  your  position  is  untenable  on  your  own 
showing." 

When  He  quotes,  "  I  am  the  God  of  Abraham,  Isaac,  and 
Jacob,"  to  the  Sadducees  as  an  argument  to  them  that  God  is 
a  God  of  the  living,  not  of  the  dead,  and  that  therefore  the 
dead  rise  again ;  or  when  He  quotes  Psalm  ex.  as  an 
argument  to  the  Pharisees  that  because  David  in  the  spirit 
called  the  Messiah  Lord,  therefore  the  Messiah  could  not  be 
inferior  to  David,  He  is  presenting  to  each  class  an  argumentin?i 
ad  ho77iinem.  It  is  not  the  sort  of  reasoning  which  He  adopts 
in  general,  and  on  which  He  relies  to  establish  the  truth  of 
His  mission  and  to  convince  men  of  His  Divinity.  Every  pass- 
age must  be  interpreted  in  connexion  with  its  surroundings, 
and  all  words  in  connexion  with  their  use.  It  might  be  added, 
with  regard  to  the  quotation  from  Psalm  ex.  i,  that  whereas  the 
Psalm,  as  a  whole,  is  of  very  late  date,  and  could  not  possibly 
bC'  ascribed  to  David,  or  the  period  of  David,  it  is  not  im- 
possible that  the  first  two  verses  are  of  earlier  origin.  There 
is  even  a  bare  possibility  that  they  belonged  to  some  old  poem 
going  back  as  far  as  the  days  of  David.  I  am  not  prepared  to 
assert,  therefore,  that  it  is  absolutely  impossible  that  these 
words  might  have  been,  in  substantially  their  present  form, 
composed  by  David  himself,  although  it  is  extremely  improb- 
able. As  far  as  our  Lord's  utterances  are  concerned,  however, 
I  consider  it  a  matter  of  complete  indifference  whether  they 
were  composed  by  David  or  Simon  Maccaba^us.  Our  Lord  is 
simply  quoting  them  as  what  the  Pharisees  themselves  would 
say.  If  we  were  to  translate  it  into  our  idiom,  we  should 
introduce  it  by  some  passage  such  as,  "  You  say  so  and  so, 
and,  on  the  basis  of  your  argument,  so  and  so  follows."  But 
that  is  not  the  method  of  the  gospel  writers,  and  I  can  give  an 
admirable  example  of  misinterpretation  of  a  very  important 
text   for  the   simple  reason   that   people   have  expected   the 


OUR  LO'RD  AND  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  75 

gospellers  to  write  after  the  manner  and  method  of  our  own 
period,  and  have  misinterpreted  them  because  they  did  not  do 
so.  Thus  in  Matthew  v.  21  ff.,  in  our  Lord's  interpretation  of 
the  sixth  commandment,  "Thou  shalt  not  kill,"  He  says,  "Ye 
have  heard  that  it  was  said  by  them  of  old  time.  Thou  shalt 
not  kill;  and  whosoever  shall  kill  shall  be  in  danger  of  the 
judgment.  But  I  say  unto  you.  That  every  one  who  is  angry 
with  his  brother  shall  be  in  danger  of  the  judgment :  and  who- 
soever shall  say  to  his  brother,  Raca,  shall  be  in  danger  of  the 
council :  and  whosoever  shall  say.  Thou  fool,  shall  be  in  danger 
of  the  hell  of  fire."  Now  commentators  generally  have  attri- 
buted to  our  Lord  as  His  own  the  words,  "and  whosoever 
shall  say  to  his  brother,  Raca,  shall  be  in  danger  of  the 
council,"  which  destroys  the  force  of  the  passage  in  very  large 
part.  The  meaning  is  really  this :  "  It  was  said  by  them  of 
old  time.  Thou  shalt  not  kill ;  and  whosoever  did  kill  was  in 
danger  of  being  tried  and  condemned  by  the  courts  appointed 
to  execute  the  law.  I  say  unto  you.  That  whosoever  is  angry 
with  his  brother  is  in  danger  of  the  judgment  of  God.  You 
have  made  an  application  of  that  commandment,  '  Thou  shalt 
not  kill,'  to  the  use  of  Hbellous  and  abusive  terms,  and  accord- 
ing to  your  legal  code,  whosoever  calls  his  brother  by  the  term 
*  Raca,'  is  in  danger  of  punishment  by  the  Sanhedrim ;  but  I 
say  unto  you,  That  whosoever  shall  call  his  brother  any  name  of 
opprobrium — the  most  general  possible— is  in  danger  of  the 
hell  of  fire."  The  introductory  phrase,  which  our  methods  of 
editing  would  require,  is  not  introduced,  and  therefore  the 
literal  interpreter  is  apt  to  make  up,  as  he  has  done,  a  new 
commandment,  issued  by  our  Lord,  that  nobody  must  call  any 
other  person  Raca. 

To  sum  up  briefly  the  results  of  this  investigation  :  I  should 
say  that  our  Lord  regarded  the  Old  Testament  as  scripture, 
and  as  containing  a  divine  revelation  to  man  through  man, 
but  He  does  not  treat  that  revelation  as  complete  and  perfect, 
nor  does  He  treat  the  individual  men  through  whom  the 
revelation  has  come  as  infallible.  The  revelation  of  the  Old 
Testament   is   incomplete   and   imperfect,  and    consequently 


76  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

there  are  things  in  the  Old  Testament  which  are  untrue,  and 
teaching  which  is  contrary  to  the  absolute  divine  truth.  Our 
Lord  taught  that  the  whole  of  the  Old  Testament  prophesies 
of  Him,  and  was  preparing  the  way  for  Him,  but  He  does  not 
anywhere  teach  that  individual  prophets  prophesied  of  the 
details  of  His  life,  or  that  their  words  are  to  be  taken  literally 
as  utterances  concerning  facts  in  His  life.  He  accepts  the 
Old  Testament  spiritually  and  not  literally.  In  the  Law  He 
accepts  as  divine  that  which  also  commends  itself  to  our 
consciences  as  in  itself  true.  The  proof  of  the  truth  of  any 
given  passage  is  not  its  authorship  nor  its  external  claim  to 
be  the  word  of  God,  but  itself.  There  is  a  moral  law,  of 
which  He  is  the  highest  revelation,  and  we,  enlightened  by 
that  revelation  and  guided  by  the  Spirit,  are  quite  capable 
of  judging  of  the  truth  of  any  passage  in  the  Old  Testament. 
We  are  to  do  what  He  did.  He  judged  of  the  truth  of  Scrip- 
t'are  by  the  final  moral  law,  and  in  doing  so  taught  us  to  do 
the  same  thing.  We  are  to  accept  or  reject  it  according  to  its 
truth,  and  the  truth  is  to  be  determined  by  the  law  of  God  as 
revealed  in  the  character  and  teaching  of  Jesus  Christ. 

■  With  regard  to  prophetic  utterances.  He  has  pointed  out 
the  same  general  method.  The  prophets  prophesied  of  Him, 
but  it  does  not  follow  that  when  a  writer  said,  "He  shall  make 
His  grave  with  the  rich  in  His  death,"  if  he  ever  did  say  it,  he 
is  prophesying  of  the  circumstance  of  our  Lord's  burial  in  the 
tomb  of  the  rich  Joseph  of  Arimathea.  The  inspiration  of 
the  prophets  is  of  a  moral  character,  just  as  is  the  inspiration 
of  the  Law,  and  their  power  of  predicting  that  which  is  to 
•come  is  based  on  the  moral  character  of  their  mission.  They 
perceive  moral  features,  the  necessary  victory  of  right  over 
wrong,  the  victory  of  God ;  they  understand  better  than  others 
the  nature  of  God's  dealings  with  men,  and  of  His  methods  of 
revealing  Himself.  It  is  with  this  side  of  their  work  that  our 
Lord  is  naturally  concerned.  It  is  the  morality  of  their  pre- 
dictions which  He  claims  as  foretelling  Him. 

The   writers  of  the   New  Testament   are  influenced  to  a 
greater  or  loss  degree  by  the  traditional  Jewish  treatment  of 


OUR  LORD  AND  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  77 

the  Old  Testament,  and  this  is  particularly  true  of  such 
writers  as  the  authors  of  the  Gospel  according  to  St.  Matthew 
and  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews.  We  have  to  make  allow- 
ance for  this  in  considering  their  use  of  the  Old  Testament. 
The  way  in  which  we  are  to  interpret  the  use  which  St.  Matthew, 
or  the  writer  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  makes  of  the  Old 
Testament  is  to  be  determined  by  comparison  with  our  Lord's 
use.  He  is  the  norm,  not  they.  They  are  human  and  fallible  ; 
but  behind  their  method  lies  the  reality,  which  our  Lord  had 
Himself  declared  and  accepted,  of  the  inspiration  of  the  Old 
Testament  scriptures. 

It  is  sometimes  said,  "  Will  not  this  method  of  interpreting 
the  Bible  destroy  the  connexion  between  the  Old  Testament 
and  the  New,  and  will  it  not  rob  such  texts  as,  *  They  pierced 
His  hands  and  His  feet,'  or  a  *  woman  shall  compass  a  man,' 
of  their  meaning  in  regard  to  Christ  ?  "     The  method  of  in- 
terpreting the  Bible  which  I  have  here  proposed  cannot  rob 
any  text  of  its  m.eaning,  nor  can  it  destroy  the  connexion 
between  the  Old  and  the  New,  nor  does  it  deny  the  prophecies 
of  the  New  in  the  Old.     It  is  nothing  but  the  application  of 
Christ's  method,  rather  than  the  method  of  some  of  the  Jewish 
disciples  of  Christ.     No  doubt  a  great  many  individual  texts, 
in  the  way  in  which  they  are  ordinarily  interpreted,  must  be 
relegated  sooner  or  later  to  the  attic ;  but  a  great  many  more 
texts,  interpreted  in  a  better  and  higher  way,  will  take  the 
place  of  these,  and  the  Old  Testament,  as  a  whole,  will  be 
more  clearly  seen  to  prepare  the  way  for  Christ,  and  to  pro- 
claim His  coming.  His  nature,  and  His  mission.     The  whole 
Old  Testament  will  become  a  prophecy  of  Christ,  rather  than 
single  and  individual  passages ;  and  everything  will  rest  on  a 
moral  basis,  appealing  to  the  conscience  and  the  reason,  rather 
than  on  a  basis  which  must  seem  to  any  but  the  very  credulous 
one  of  chance  and  caprice. 


^ 


\ 


Part  II 
EVOLUTION  AND  THE  BIBLE 


CHAPTER  V 
MODERN  STUDY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

IT  is  customary  in  certain  quarters  to  call  students  of  the 
Bible,  according  to  modern  methods,  "higher  critics," 
and  to  designate  the  present-day  methods  of  Bible  study  in 
general  "  Higher  Criticism,"  which  Higher  Criticism  is  sup- 
posed to  indicate  a  dangerous  laxity  regarding  the  fundamental 
tenets  of  Christianity,  if  not  absolute  infidelity.  How  many 
who  thus  use  the  term  have  any  knowledge  of  its  origin  and 
true  meaning,  or  of  the  history  of  the  development  of  the 
present  science  (for  such  it  may  fairly  be  called)  of  Bible 
study  ?  Who  to-day  would  dispute  Le  Clerc's  statement  in 
his  criticism  (1685)  of  Simon's  Critical  History  of  the  Old 
Testa7?ieftt,  that  in  writing  the  history  of  a  book  it  is  not 
enough  to  say  "when  and  by  whom  it  was  written,  what 
copyists  transcribed  it,  and  what  faults  they  committed  in 
transcribing  it.  It  is  not  sufficient  to  tell  us  who  translated 
it,  and  to  call  our  attention  to  defects  in  his  version ;  nor 
even  to  teach  us  who  commented  upon  it,  and  what  there 
is  that  is  faulty  in  those  comments.  We  must  discover,  if 
that  is  possible,  with  what  purpose  the  author  composed  it, 
what  occasion  caused  him  to  take  up  his  pen,  and  to  what 
opinions  or  to  what  events  he  may  make  allusion  in  that 
work."     And  yet  this  is  "  Higher  Criticism." 

It  was  Eichhorn,  of  Gottingen,  who  first,  a  little  more 
than  a  hundred  years  later,  applied  to  the  method  of  Bible 
study  thus  defined  by  the  Dutch  scholar  the  term  "Higher 
Criticism,"  "a  new  name,"  as  he  says,  "to  no  humanist." 
Hear  how  he  expounds  the  value  of  this  Higher  Criticism 
G  81 


82  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

for  the  interpretation  of  the  Book  of  Genesis.  "The  credi- 
biHty  of  the  book  obviously  gains  by  it.  The  historian  is 
no  longer  obliged  to  rely  on  one  reporter  in  the  history  of 
the  most  distant  past ;  and  in  the  duplicated  narratives  of  the 
same  event  he  is  not  obliged  to  force  into  harmony  the 
unessential  differences  in  accessory  circumstances  by  artificial 
devices.  He  sees  in  such  divergences  the  marks  of  indepen- 
dent origin,  and  finds  in  their  agreement  in  the  main  important 
confirmation.  The  interpreter,  when  the  Higher  Criticism 
has  separated  his  documents  for  him,  need  no  longer  wrestle 
with  difificulties  which  are  insoluble.  He  will  no  longer  ex- 
plain the  second  chapter  of  Genesis  by  the  first,  or  the  first 
by  the  second,  and  the  world  will  cease  to  lay  on  Moses  the 
burden  of  the  sins  of  his  younger  expositors.  Finally,  when 
the  Higher  Criticism  has  distinguished  between  the  writers, 
and  characterised  each  of  them  by  his  general  method,  his 
diction,  his  favourite  expressions,  and  other  peculiarities,  her 
lower  sister  (textual,  or  lower  criticism),  who  occupies  herself 
only  with  words  and  spies  out  false  readings,  lays  down  her 
own  rules  and  principles  for  determining  the  text,  discovering 
glosses,  and  detecting  interpolations  and  transpositions." 

Devout  believer  in  the  Mosaic  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch 
as  Eichhorn  was,  he  was  as  sharply  attacked  by  the  tradi- 
tionalists of  his  day  as  the  higher  critics  of  the  present 
generation  have  been  by  the  present-day  traditionalists, — 
which  latter,  by  the  way,  unknown  to  themselves,  perhaps, 
stand  in  general  where  the  "  Higher  Critic,"  Eichhorn,  stood 
a  hundred  and  twenty  years  ago — so  that  he  wrote :  "  Party 
Spirit  will,  perhaps,  for  a  couple  of  decades  snort  at  the  Higher 
Criticism,  instead  of  rewarding  it  with  the  thanks  which  are 
really  due  it." 

But  to  trace  the  history  of  the  modern  method  of  Bible 
study  we  must  go  much  further  back  than  the  times  of 
Eichhorn  or  Le  Clerc.  Higher  Criticism  may  fairly  be  said 
to  have  its  beginnings  in  the  translation  of  the  Old  Testament 
out  of  the  Hebrew  into  Greek.  The  tendency  in  the  sacred 
literature  of  all  languages  is  towards  the  doctrine  of  literal 


MODERN   STUDY  OF  THE  BIBLE  83 

inspiration :  that  the  very  language  in  which  the  Sacred  Book 
is  written  is  sacred,  and  that  every  word  and  even  every 
letter  of  the  Sacred  Script  has  value  and  importance.  To-day 
the  orthodox  Moslem  protests  against  any  translation  of  the 
Koran,  and  whatever  his  own  tongue,  and  however  unin- 
telligible to  him  the  original  text  of  the  Koran  may  be,  he 
persists  in  the  repetition  of  its  words  in  Arabic  only.  The 
same  is  true  in  an  even  more  extreme  degree  of  the  Veda 
and  Avesta.  The  Jew,  likewise,  in  all  lands  reads  in  the 
synagogue  his  Sacred  Book  in  the  original  Hebrew,  and  old- 
fashioned  rabbins  still  claim  that  Hebrew  is  the  sacred 
language,  given  by  God  to  man,  and  spoken  in  the  Garden 
of  Eden,  a  view  which  many  Christians  held  not  many 
decades  since.  As  a  curiosity  of  scholarship,  I  may  mention 
an  American  rabbi,  born  in  Hungary,  who  studied  Sanscrit 
and  comparative  philology  with  me  under  the  late  Professor 
Whitney,  of  Yale,  a  quarter  of  a  century  since.  His  object 
in  so  doing  was  to  obtain  the  material  to  prove  what  he 
firmly  believed :  that  Sanscrit  and  all  other  languages  were 
derived  from  Hebrew,  the  tongue  given  of  God  to  men. 

I  have  already,  in  a  former  chapter,  pointed  out  the  result 
of  the  translation  of  the  Old  Testament  into  Hebrew  in 
Alexandria.  By  the  fact  of  that  translation  the  books  of  the 
Old  Testament  were  brought  into  the  arena  of  Greek  scientific 
investigation.  The  same  methods  were  applied  to  them 
which  were  applied  to  the  study  of  Homer,  the  Greek 
tragedians,  philosophers,  etc.,  what  we  may  fairly  call  the 
Higher  Criticism  of  that  day.  An  effort  was  made  to 
determine  the  authorship  of  the  various  books,  and  they 
were  rearranged  on  a  new  scheme,  according  to  their  authors 
and  their  contents,  and  supplied  with  headings  accordingly. 
In  spite  of  the  opposition  of  the  orthodox  Jews  of  Palestine, 
this  translation  and  rearrangement  of  the  books  of  the  Old 
Testament  became  the  Bible  of  the  Greek-speaking  Jews 
of  Egypt,  and  from  them  it  was  adopted  by  the  Christian 
Church. 

The  early  Christians  did  not  hold  to  literal  inspiration  in 


84  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

the  orthodox  Jewish  sense.  It  was  not  the  language,  but 
the  sense  with  which  they  were  concerned.  Accordingly 
the  Bible  was  translated  into  the  language  of  each  Church, 
so  that  there  have  come  down  to  us  not  one,  but  several 
Greek  translations,  besides  the  numerous  Syriac,  Latin, 
Gothic,  Ethiopic,  Coptic,  Armenian,  and  Arabic  translations 
of  the  Scriptures.  But  as  the  Dark  Ages  set  in  the  Christian 
point  of  view  began  to  change,  and  each  Church  came  to 
consider  its  own  translation  of  the  Bible  as  a  finality,  applying 
to  it  with  curious  logical  inconsistency  that  doctrine  of  literal 
inspiration,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  has  affected  the  sacred 
literature  of  all  lands.  The  Ethiopians  changed  their 
language,  but  the  old,  unintelligible  Ethiopic  Scriptures  re- 
mained untranslated  and  were  regarded  as  sacred  in  their 
letter.  The  same  was  true  in  the  Greek  Church  and  the 
Armenian  Church.  Throughout  the  West  the  Latin  transla- 
tion came  to  be  regarded  everywhere  as  the  sacred  letter 
of  Scripture.  For  a  time  men  had  ceased  to  reason. 
Authority  had  usurped  the  place  of  reason  in  all  departments 
of  knowledge.  For  centuries  the  philosophy,  mathematics, 
medicine,  astrology,  and  the  like,  which  the  West  had 
borrowed  from  the  Greeks  in  the  days  when  the  Greeks 
were  the  scientific  and  progressive  thinkers  of  the  world, 
were  accepted  as  a  finality  on  the  authority  of  antiquity. 
They  were  discussed  and  commentated ;  hair  -  splitting 
speculations  were  based  upon  them,  but  no  effort  was  made 
to  go  behind  what  had  been  handed  down  or  to  examine 
the  foundations  upon  which  it  rested. 

-  A  companion  doctrine  to  the  doctrine  of  literal  inspiration 
is  the  doctrine  that  all  knowledge  is  contained  in  sacred 
scripture,  that  scripture  is  not  only  an  instruction  in  religion, 
but  also  a  revelation  for  science,  for  geography,  for  history. 
This  doctrine,  common  to  all  peoples  who  have  maintained 
a  literal  inspiration  of  their  sacred  scriptures,  was  adopted  in 
the  Dark  Ages  by  the  Christian  Church,  and  it  was  with  this 
doctrine  that  the  thinkers  of  the  Renaissance  first  came  in 
conflict. 


MODERN   STUDY  OF  THE  BIBLE  8s 

With  the  fall  of  Constantinople  and  the  invention  of 
printing  a  new  era  dawned  in  the  West.  There  was  a  new 
birth  of  literature  and  of  knowledge.  Men  began  to  think 
and  to  explore  for  themselves,  and  authority  was  compelled 
to  yield  place  to  reason.  But  it  was  a  slow  process.  The 
prejudices  of  ages,  and  the  organised  opposition  of  a  Church 
and  society  entrenched  in  those  prejudices,  had  to  be  over- 
come. Astronomers,  physicists,  geographers,  physicians  were 
one  after  another  confronted  with  the  charge  of  heresy, 
because  they  contradicted  the  views  derived  from  the  ancient 
Greeks,  and  supposed  to  be  revealed  in  the  Bible.  We  are 
all  familiar  with  the  religious  objections  with  which  Columbus 
was  confronted  when  he  propounded  the  theory  of  a  Western 
Hemisphere,  and  the  condemnation  and  persecution  of  Coper- 
nicus, Galileo,  and  other  great  discoverers.  Where  the  bulk 
of  the  Chinese  stand  to-day,  there  the  Church  and  the  great 
mass  of  the  people  of  the  West  stood  at  the  close  of  the 
fifteenth  and  the  commencement  of  the  sixteenth  centuries. 
And  even  to-day  the  battle  is  scarcely  won.  Old  men  will 
remember  the  prejudice  with  which  comparative  philology  was 
regarded,  as  contradicting  what  was  supposed  to  be  the  Bible 
teaching,  that  Hebrew  was  the  original  language,  given  by  God 
to  men ;  or  the  storm  raised  by  the  geologists  and  astronomers 
who  declared  that  the  world  must  have  been  created  earlier 
than  B.C.  4004;  and  men  who  have  not  yet  reached  middle 
age  have  heard  from  the  pulpit  or  read  in  religious  books 
and  journals  denunciations  of  Darwin  and  his  epoch-making 
doctrine  of  Evolution,  on  the  ground  that  that  doctrine  con- 
tradicted the  Bible. 

What  was  achieved  in  the  world  of  natural  science  by  the 
discoveries  of  Columbus,  Galileo,  Copernicus,  and  others 
affected  the  world  of  literature  also.  Men  commenced  to 
question  the  writings  of  the  past,  their  traditional  claims  to 
authorship  and  to  authority.  But  here  progress  was  even 
slower  than  in  the  field  of  natural  science.  It  was  the  famous 
battle  of  the  books  between  Bentley  and  Boyle  in  the  closing 
year  of  the  seventeenth  century  which  first  established  modern 


86  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

literary  criticism  on  a  firm  foundation.  Up  to  that  time  it 
was  generally  supposed  that  the  questions  of  authorship,  date, 
and  composition  of  ancient  books  had  been  settled  by  com- 
petent scholars  of  the  past,  better  fitted  to  decide  the  question 
than  modern  critics,  and  their  authority  was  supposed  to  have 
placed  these  questions  beyond  cavil. 

The  battle  of  the  books  was  fought  over  the  Epistles  of 
Phalarls.  Bentley  proved  that  these  epistles  were  not,  as  had 
been  supposed,  written  by  Phalaris.  The  main  points  of  his 
argument  were:  (i)  that  there  is  conclusive  internal  evidence 
of  later  authorship,  in  the  mention  of  places  and  things  which 
did  not  exist  at  the  time  of  Phalaris ;  (2)  by  the  argument 
of  language  they  are  shown  to  have  been  later  than  the  time 
of  Phalaris,  since  they  employ  a  dialect  not  used  until  after 
his  time  j  (3)  they  presuppose  different  conditions  of  thought 
and  different  customs  from  those  prevailing  in  the  time  of 
Phalaris ;  (4)  the  famous  argument  of  silence — that  there  is 
no  reference  anywhere  to  the  Epistles  of  Phalaris  for  a 
thousand  years  after  his  time. 

As  a  result  of  this  battle  of  the  books,  men  began  to 
question  in  all  literary  fields  the  authority  on  which  traditions 
of  authorship  rested,  and  to  apply  everywhere  the  principles 
which  Bentley  had  laid  down.  But  this  involved  much  more 
than  the  mere  question  of  authorship.  It  involved,  ulti- 
mately, historical  traditions,  as  well  as  the  traditions  of  Hterary 
composition ;  for  the  two  are  inevitably  linked  together,  and 
scholars  had  accepted  the  statements  of  ancient  writers  with 
regard  to  historical  facts  on  the  same  authority  on  which  they 
had  accepted  the  traditional  authorship  of  ancient  books. 
But  the  process  of  investigation  was  slow,  and  men  continued 
to  accept  the  stories  of  William  Tell,  Romulus  and  Remus, 
and  the  like  on  the  authority  of  the  past,  long  after  they  had 
refused  to  accept  traditions  of  literary  authorship  on  similar 
authority.  It  was  not  until  the  present  century  that  Niebuhr 
subjected  the  traditions  of  Roman  history  to  a  searching, 
critical  examination,  as  epoch-making  in  its  line  as  Bentley's 
investigation  of  the  authorship  of  the  Epistles  of  Phalarls  had 


MODERN   STUDY  OF  THE   BIBLE  87 

been  in  the  line  of  literature.  It  was  Niebuhr's  work  which 
led  Ewald  to  his  famous  reconstruction  of  Hebrew  history, 
the  foundation  on  which  all  later  work  in  the  study  of  the 
history  of  Israel  is  founded. 

It  was  inevitable  that  the  awakening  of  thought  and  the 
substitution  of  reason  for  authority  in  science,  secular  litera- 
ture, and  secular  history,  should  ultimately  affect  sacred 
literature  and  sacred  history  as  well.  But  these  latter  in- 
vestigations have  a  history  of  their  own.  It  was  the  Spanish 
Jews  among  whom,  chronologically,  the  work  of  Old  Testa- 
ment criticism  began,  even  before  the  time  of  the  Renaissance; 
for  we  may  pass  over  altogether  the  uncritical  speculations  of 
the  first  and  following  Christian  centuries  with  regard  to 
Ezra's  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch  and  other  books  of  the 
Hebrew  Bible,  which  theory  did,  however,  later  exert  an 
influence  on  Spinoza.  The  advanced  thinkers  of  their  day 
in  all  departments  of  knowledge,  we  are  still  indebted  to 
the  Spanish  Jews  for  much  of  the  form  and  phraseology  of 
our  modern  Hebrew  grammars.  Inspired  by  the  example 
of  the  Arabic  scholars,  they  sought  to  apply  scientific  prin- 
ciples to  the  study  of  their  own  language  and  to  formulate 
its  laws.  The  verbal  examination  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures, 
resulting  from  these  attempts,  led  some  of  them,  in  the 
eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries,  to  observe  that  certain  passages 
in  Genesis  are  inconsistent  with  a  belief  in  the  authorship  of 
Moses.  But  this  Jewish  criticism  did  not,  at  the  time,  affect 
the  Christian  world.  Taken  up  and  expanded  later  by 
Spinoza,  it  played  its  part,  but  for  the  moment  it  passed 
unnoticed. 

The  Reformation  aroused  men's  interest  in  religion,  as  the 
Renaissance  had  aroused  their  interest  in  literature  and 
science ;  and  as  in  the  Renaissance  men  had  begun  to  think 
for  themselves  and  investigate  for  themselves  in  scientific 
matters,  so  now  in  the  Reformation  they  began  to  think  and 
investigate  for  themselves  in  matters  of  religion.  Carlstadt, 
in  1520,  published  at  Wittenberg  an  essay,  in  which,  on  the 
ground  that  the  style  of  narration  after  the  death  of  Moses 


88  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

remained  the  same  as  before,  he  argued  that  it  might  be  held 
that  Moses  was  not  the  author  of  the  Pentateuch.  Luther, 
like  all  great  religious  leaders,  was  careless  of  the  form  in 
comparison  of  the  substance.  Noting  the  reference  in 
Genesis  xxxvi.  31  to  the  kings  who  had  reigned  in  Edom 
before  there  were  any  kings  in  Israel,  he  asks  what  it 
matters  whether  Moses  wrote  the  Pentateuch  or  not,  and 
does  not  investigate  the  question  further.  It  was  not  the 
man  who  wrote  the  book,  nor  the  date  of  its  writing,  but 
the  religious  content  with  which  he  was  concerned.  Later 
in  the  same  century,  Dutch,  Flemish,  and  Spanish  scholars, 
like  Du  Maes,  Bonfrere,  Episcopius,  Pereira,  and  the  Jesuits, 
took  up  the  critical  study  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  went 
much  further  than  Carlstadt  had  done  in  pointing  out 
evidences  of  additions  to  or  editions  of  the  Pentateuch, 
Joshua,  Judges,  Samuel,  and  Kings  at  dates  later  than  their 
traditional  authorship.  These  critics,  be  it  observed,  were 
all  pious  Churchmen. 

Then  came  the  free-thinking  Hobbes  in  England,  who, 
in  his  Lroiathan  (165 1),  noting  the  same  passages  which  had 
seemed  to  Spanish  Jews  and  Christian  scholars  inconsistent 
with  Mosaic  authorship,  concluded  that  "  Moses  wrote  all  that 
he  is  said  to  have  written,  as,  for  example,  the  volume  of  the 
Law  which  is  contained,  as  it  seemeth,  in  the  eleventh  of 
Deuteronomy  and  following  chapters  to.  the  twenty-seventh." 
He  identifies  this  law  with  the  law  ''  which,  having  been  lost, 
was  long  after  found  again  by  Hilkiah  and  sent  to  King 
Josiah"  (2  Kings  xxii.  8),  following  in  part  St.  Jerome,  who 
was  the  first  critic  to  identify  the  law  book  of  Josiah  with 
Deuteronomy,  but  sets  aside  the  title,  "P'ive  Books  of  Moses," 
as  of  no  authority,  and  concludes  that  the  Pentateuch,  as 
a  whole,  was  not  his  work. 

Next  follows  De  la  Peyrere  (1654),  a  French  Calvinist,  with 
his  curious  theory  of  pre- Adamite  men,  from  whom  the 
greater  part  of  mankind  were  descended,  and  his  literary 
study  of  the  Pentateuch  with  this  idea  in  mind.  Using  the 
passages  which  had  been  already  used  by  others,  and  adding 


MODERN  STUDY  OF  THE  BIBLE  89 

a  few  more,  he  reached  the  conclusion  that  Genesis  was 
composed  out  of  different  documents,  compiled  and  arranged 
by  another  than  Moses. 

A  little  later  (167 1)  Spinoza  with  trenchant  pen  discussed 
the  chronological  difficulties  of  the  Pentateuch  and  the 
historical  books.  Both  in  his  drastic  method  of  treating  the 
subject,  and  also  in  his  conclusions,  he  went  much  further 
than  any  of  his  predecessors.  Moses,  according  to  him,  had 
composed  a  book  of  commentaries  on  the  Law,  but  that  book 
was  no  longer  extant.  Deuteronomy  was  the  law  book  pro- 
mulgated by  Ezra,  as  narrated  in  Nehemiah  viii.  9,  and  it  was 
Ezra  who  had  written  the  "history  of  the  Hebrew  nation,  from 
the  creation  of  the  world  to  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem." 

In  his  Critical  History  of  the  Old  Testamefit  {16^2)^  Father 
Simon,  of  the  Congregation  of  the  Oratory,  undertook  to 
vindicate  ecclesiastical  tradition  and  the  authority  of  Scripture 
against  the  speculations  of  philosophers  like  Spinoza.  Never- 
theless, he  agrees  with  the  latter  in  recognising  the  diversities 
of  style,  the  confusions  of  order,  and  the  chronological  incon- 
sistencies of  the  narrative  of  Genesis.  Much  after  the  manner 
of  some  of  his  Roman  Catholic  predecessors,  and  especially 
Du  Maes,  whose  work  he  freely  used,  "  he  framed  a  theory  of 
the  composition  of  the  Pentateuch  out  of  documents  drawn 
up  from  time  to  time  by  recorders  or  keepers  of  public 
archives  under  the  direction  of  Moses."  ^ 

Three  years  later  the  Dutch  scholar,  Le  Clerc,  published 
a  criticism  on  Simon's  history,  in  which,  as  already  noticed, 
he  propounded  the  principles  of  the  Higher  Criticism.  He 
placed  the  study  of  the  Old  Testament  on  the  same  plane 
with  all  historical  inquiry,  demanding  that  the  conditions 
under  which  any  work  was  produced  should  be  considered, 
the  author's  purpose  in  writing  it  discovered,  and  the  events  or 
opinions  to  which  he  alludes  taken  into  consideration. 

^  The  Hexateiuh.  By  J.  Estlin  Carpenter  and  G.  Harford 
Battersby,  vol.  i.  p.  25.  I  wish  to  acknowledge  my  indebtedness  to 
this  valuable  work,  not  merely  for  the  above  quotation,  but  also  for  many 
suggestions  and  some  facts  utilised  in  this  chapter. 


90  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Up  to  this  point  we  have  a  succession  of  investigators  recog- 
nising differences  of  style,  inconsistencies,  and  contradictions 
of  statements,  chronological  difficulties,  and  the  like,  incom- 
patible with  the  composition  of  the  Pentateuch  in  the  age 
of  Moses.  We  also  find  a  general  inclination  to  explain  these 
phenomena  by  the  supposition  of  the  compilation  of  the 
Pentateuch  from  different  documents ;  but  no  one  had  as 
yet  proposed  a  method  of  distinguishing  the  documents.  It 
was  a  French  Roman  Catholic  physician,  Jean  Astruc,  who 
furnished  the  first  clue  to  the  analysis  of  the  documents  in 
an  anonymous  work,  published  at  Brussels  in  1753.  He 
observed  that  in  the  Book  of  Genesis  the  name  Elohim  was 
used  for  God  in  one  set  of  narratives  and  Yahaweh  in  another, 
and  that  the  difference  in  the  use  of  the  name  of  God 
corresponded  with  a  difference  in  style.  Accordingly,  on 
the  basis  primarily  of  the  differences  of  the  Divine  Name, 
he  divided  Genesis  into  two  main  narratives,  A  and  B. 
Besides  these  two  main  narratives  he  found  a  small  number 
of  passages,  apparently  not  belonging  to  either  narrative, 
which  he  designated  by  the  letters  C  to  M.  Valuable  as 
his  discovery  was,  for  the  moment  his  work  produced  no 
effect,  and  it  is  even  doubtful  whether  Eichhorn,  who  pub- 
lished a  somewhat  similar  analysis  in  his  Introduction  to  the 
Old  Testament^  in  1780,  was  acquainted  with  his  work.  It 
is  on  the  latter's  analysis  that  the  subsequent  work  of  criticism 
is  really  based,  and  with  him  the  investigation  of  the  Old 
Testament  was  transferred  to  the  schools  of  Germany,  where 
it  found  a  fertile  soil  and  progressed  rapidly.  Astruc  had 
applied  his  analysis  only  to  Genesis.  Eichhorn  suggested 
that  a  similar  method  of  analysis  was  applicable  to  the  re- 
mainder of  the  Pentateuch,  but  did  not  make  a  successful 
application  of  his  method.  That  was  done  first  by  an  English 
Roman  CathoHc  priest,  Geddes  (1792),  who,  as  a  result  of 
his  investigation,  reached  the  conclusion  that  the  Pentateuch 
in  its  present  form  was  not  written  by  Moses ;  but  that  it  was 
written,  probably  in  Jerusalem,  after  the  the  time  of  David 
and  not  later  than  the  reign  of  Hezekiah.     Geddes's  work 


MODERN   STUDY  OF  THE  BIBLE  91 

influenced  very  strongly  Vater,  of  Halle,  who  incorporated 
it  in  his  Commentary  on  the  Pentateuch  (1802).  Vater,  how- 
ever, went  further  than  Geddes  in  regard  to  date,  holding 
that  the  Pentateuch  as  a  whole  was  not  in  existence  before 
the  Exile.  Then  follows  De  Wette,  inspired  in  his  turn  by 
Vater,  with  his  Contributions  to  the  Introduction  of  the  Old 
Testament  (1806).  Leaving  the  mere  literary  questions  which 
had  attracted  the  attention  of  his  predecessors,  De  Wette 
undertook  an  examination  of  the  institutions  underlying  the 
Pentateuchal  codes,  and  in  doing  this  brought  the  whole 
literature  of  Israel  under  consideration.  Beginning  his  investi- 
gations with  a  comparative  study  of  the  books  of  Chronicles 
and  Kings,  he  reached  the  conclusion  that  Chronicles  could 
not  be  accepted  as  evidence  for  the  religious  practices  of 
Israel  in  the  earHer  periods,  and  that  the  only  reliable  evidence 
regarding  those  conditions  was  to  be  found  in  the  unconscious 
testimony  supplied  in  the  allusions  and  references  in  Judges, 
Samuel,  and  Kings.  Arguing  from  this  basis  of  historical 
fact,  he  found  the  requirements  of  the  Pentateuch  continually 
ignored  or  violated  by  the  people  at  large  and  their  responsible 
leaders ;  and  finally,  as  a  result  of  this  comparison  of  the  laws 
with  the  evidence  of  the  historical  statements  and  allusions, 
he  reached  the  conclusion  that  the  Pentateuch  contained  a 
successive  development  of  legislation,  in  which  the  Book  of 
Deuteronomy  could  be  clearly  assigned  to  the  seventh  century 
B.C.  ]  results  which,  after  a  generation  of  dormancy,  as  it  were, 
are  now  generally  accepted. 

The  man  who  first  attempted  a  reconstruction  of  the  history 
of  Israel  on  the  basis  of  a  critical  study  of  its  literature  was 
Heinrich  Ewald  (1843).  Inspired,  as  already  stated,  by  the 
work  of  Niebuhr  in  reconstructing  the  history  of  Rome,  he 
undertook  a  similar  reconstruction  of  the  history  of  Israel. 
The  necessary  basis  of  his  work  was  a  critical  analysis  of  the 
entire  literature  of  Israel,  for  the  purpose  of  sifting  out  the 
historical  facts,  arranging  them  in  their  true  sequence,  and 
determining  the  actual  relation  to  one  another  of  the  events 
recorded  or  referred  to.     In  the  same  spirit  he  undertook  an 


92  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

investigation  of  the  language  of  Israel.  He  wrote  a  new 
Hebrew  grammar  and  retranslated  and  rearranged,  with  a 
critical  study  of  the  text,  the  prophets  and  the  poets  of 
Israel.  His  work,  but  especially  his  History  of  Israel^  gave 
a  vast  impulse  to  the  critical  study  of  the  Bible  everywhere. 
He  presented  that  positive  reconstructive  element  which  was 
necessary  to  give  life  and  interest  to  the  apparently  negative 
work  of  the  critical  investigation  of  the  Old  Testament 
writings.  Men  arose  from  the  reading  of  his  works  with  a 
new  sense  of  the  reality  of  the  events  narrated  and  a  feeling 
of  personal  acquaintance  with  the  ancient  prophets  and  poets, 
whose  words  echoed  in  their  ears  with  a  meaning  applicable 
to  their  own  times.  He  had  filled  Hebrew  history  with 
throbbing  life,  and  kindled  everywhere  a  new  interest  in  the 
Bible  and  an  enthusiasm  for  the  critical  study  of  the  Old 
Testament.  Since  his  time  progress  has  been  rapid.  To-day 
his  history  and  many  of  his  results  are  antiquated  \  but  the 
ideas  for  which  he  stood  in  the  treatment  of  the  literature  and 
the  history  of  Israel  now  prevail  among  scholars  everywhere. 

Time  would  not  suffice  to  mention  the  names  of  the 
scholars  who  have  so  brilliantly  prosecuted  the  critical  study 
of  the  Old  Testament  literature,  or  explored  the  development 
of  the  religion  and  institutions  of  the  Jews  in  the  almost  half- 
century  since  Ewald's  time.  Within  that  period,  moreover, 
the  successful  prosecution  of  such  studies  has  been  vastly 
promoted  by  the  archaeological  discoveries  which  have  so 
greatly  increased  our  knowledge  of  the  ancient  world,  and 
especially  the  ancient  Semitic  world,  of  which  Israel  formed 
a  part.  Since  Ev/ald's  time,  also,  the  general  application  of 
the  two  principles  of  comparison  and  evolution  has  profoundly 
influenced  and  mightily  quickened  literary,  hiscorical,  and 
religious  study. 

We  no  longer  study  anything  by  itself,  but  compare  it  with 
correlated  experiences  and  phenomena.  In  the  sphere  of 
language-study  we  have  the  science  of  comparative  philology. 
Language  is  compared  with  language.  By  means  of  this 
comparison  we  have  found  that  there  are  groups  of  languages 


MODERN   STUDY  OF  THE  BIBLE  93 

closely  related  to  one  another,  and  comparing  these  groups 
with  one  another,  we  have  discovered  certain  universal  laws 
of  language.  Comparing  further  the  languages  within  each 
group,  we  ascertain  the  laws  common  to  that  group.  By  such 
comparison  a  flood  of  light  has  been  thrown  on  language. 
We  know  Greek  and  Latin  and  Hebrew  to-day  as  our  pre- 
decessors did  not  know  them.  Where  such  a  comparison  has 
been  made,  we  are  able,  to  some  extent,  to  write  the  history 
of  a  people  on  the  basis  of  its  language,  to  determine  its 
origin,  its  connexions,  its  experiences,  habits,  and  civilisation ; 
and  much  more,  we  are  able  to  detect  dialectical  differences 
and  their  significance.  The  same  principle  of  comparison  is 
now  applied  to  the  study  of  history,  of  literature,  of  philo- 
sophy, of  ethics,  of  religion.  Recognising  the  kinship  of  men, 
and  their  subjection  to  the  same  general  laws,  we  realise  that 
under  similar  conditions  they  will  think  and  act  similarly. 
We  can  compare  them  with  one  another,  establish  certain 
categories  and  certain  laws,  and  thus  the  fragmentary  records 
of  one  people  may  be  explained  and  expanded  by  a  com- 
parison of  the  records  of  another.  Why  did  men  sacrifice? 
What  is  the  meaning  of  sacrifice  ?  We  are  no  longer  content 
to  draw  our  conclusions  from  the  laws  concerning  sacrifice  in 
the  Bible,  or  the  allusions  to  sacrifice  and  the  ideas  connected 
with  it  in  the  historical  books  of  the  Old  Testament,  the 
Psalms,  and  the  Prophets,  or  to  confine  our  studies  to  those 
documents.  We  ask  ourselves  whether  the  sacrificial  rites 
of  the  Jews  were  the  same  as  or  different  from  those  of  other 
people.  We  compare  them  one  with  another,  seeking  the 
general  underlying  laws  of  sacrifice,  and  its  fundamental 
meaning,  casting  in  the  process  light  on  much  that  was 
formerly  dark  in  the  Jewish  record.  But  just  as  comparative 
philology  has  proved  that  Hebrew  was  not  the  primal  language, 
given  of  God  in  Eden ;  just  as  it  has  shown  that  Hebrew  is 
one  among  many  tongues  and  subject  to  the  same  laws  as 
other  tongues ;  so  the  comparative  study  of  history  and 
rehgion  must  inevitably  lay  Hebrew  history  and  the  religion 
of  Israel  side  by  side  with  the  history  and  the  religion  of 


94  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

other  peoples,  test  them  by  the  same  methods,  and  apply  to 
them  the  same  rules.     This  men  are  doing  to-day. 

The  other  great  principle  is  evolution.  Evolution,  dis- 
covered by  Darwin,  in  the  world  of  natural  phenomena,  has 
within  the  last  quarter  of  a  century  become  an  axiom  of 
modern  thought.  It  is  impossible  to-day  to  write  a  history  of 
any  sort  without  taking  into  account  the  doctrine  of  evolution; 
or  rather  unconsciously  we  posit  evolution  in  the  treatment  of 
our  theme.  We  observe  everywhere  an  evolution  taking  place. 
Nothing  occurs  of  itself.  Every  event,  every  opinion,  every 
achievement  is  dependent  upon  what  has  preceded,  and  in 
its  turn  becomes  the  source  out  of  which  something  further 
is  evolved.  This  principle  has  given  a  reasonableness  and 
a  connectedness  to  history  which  it  did  not  possess  before. 
Viewing  history  thus  as  an  evolution,  we  have  a  working 
hypothesis  which  helps  us  to  fit  events,  institutions,  laws, 
thoughts,  behefs,  customs,  rites,  and  ceremonies  into  their 
place  in  a  great  progressive  series ;  not  that  the  progress  is 
always  absolutely  forward,  but  that  nothing  appears  uncon- 
nected or  unrelated.  Each  rite,  each  opinion,  each  belief  is 
developed  out  of  something  which  preceded  it.  It  is  the 
application  to  the  study  of  the  intellectual  and  moral  history 
of  the  world  of  that  which  was  first  discerned  to  be  God's 
method  in  the  world  of  physical  nature. 

Space  would  not  permit  me  to  set  forth  in  detail  the  results 
obtained  by  the  application  of  modern  methods  of  study  to 
the  investigation  of  the  Old  Testament.  Be  it  noted  that  in 
applying  such  methods,  in  treating  the  Bible  in  that  regard 
like  other  books,  in  applying  to  its  exposition  and  elucidation 
the  best  ^science  of  the  day,  precisely  as  in  the  exposition  of 
Homer,  or  Herodotus,  or  Froissart,  or  Shakespeare,  and  refusing 
to  be  bouiid  by  the  interpretations  or  theories  of  the  past,  we 
are  imitating  the  attitude  of  the  early  Church,  as  over  against 
Jewish  traditionalism  and  the  Jewish  doctrine  of  the  inspiration 
of  the  letter.  And  be  it  noted  further,  that  the  present  views 
of  Bible  scholars  are  not  a  mere  passing  fancy,  nor  in  any 
sense  an  invention   of  enemies  of  the  faith.     They  are  the 


MODERN   STUDY  OF  THE   BIBLE  95 

result  of  a  long  series  of  development,  affecting  all  science 
and  all  thought ;  they  are  on  all  fours  with  the  results  obtained 
in  other  fields  by  the  application  of  the  same  methods ;  they 
are  results  obtained  by  the  labours  of  men  who  love  the  Bible, 
and  who  have  toiled  to  make  it  more  intelligible  and  more 
precious  to  their  fellow-men. 

In  general  modern  scholars  have  reached  the  conclusion 
that  the  Old  Testament,  in  its  laws  and  institutions,  its  his- 
torical narratives,  and  its  prophetical  and  poetical  writings, 
represents  a  gradual  development.  First  they  found  four 
main  documents  in  the  Pentateuch  and  Joshua,  combined  by 
some  editor  into  one  work.  Then  they  ascertained  that  these 
documents  represented  not  so  much  individual  authors  as 
schools  of  thought  and  periods  of  time,  and  that  in  a  general 
way  the  whole  historical  literature  of  the  Hebrews  was  a 
combination  of  materials  from  different  sources,  handled  by 
different  schools  of  thought  at  different  periods,  with  differing 
theories  and  differing  interests.  About  David  or  Solomon's 
time  the  first  Jewish  chroniclers  commenced  their  work,  re- 
cording the  stories  and  the  history  of  their  own  time.  They 
and  their  successors  and  continuators  sought  to  gather  up  also 
the  poetical  fragments,  the  records,  and  the  stories  which  had 
come  down  from  the  past,  and  combine  them  with  their 
narrative.  So  these  Jewish  chronicles  grew  backward  and 
forward,  until  they  comprised  the  whole  period,  from  the 
creation  of  the  world  to  the  narrator's  own  time.  Moreover, 
the  narrative  assumed  different  forms  under  different  hands, 
in  different  places  with  different  interests.  Legislation  grew 
in  a  somewhat  similar  way  from  Moses'  time  onward.  A  law 
developed  in  practice,  through  legal  decisions,  adaptations  to 
new  conditions,  compromises  and  codifications,  into  codes  of 
laws,  and  those  again  into  ever  new  codes,  until  in  Ezra's  time 
we  have  the  great  mass  of  legislation  known  as  the  Priest's 
code,  all  descended  from  Moses,  and  consequently  all  referred 
to  him  as  its  author.  The  Psalms  grew  in  the  sayme  way  from 
David's  time,  or  even  earlier,  onward.  To  a  large  extent  what 
was  first  found  to  be  true  of  Hebrew  legislation  and  Hebrew 


96  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

historical  writing  is  now  seen  to  be  true  of  Hebrew  psalmody, 
the  writings  of  the  prophets,  and  the  wisdom  literature.  The 
licerary  conventions  of  ancient  Israel  were  very  unlike  those  of 
the  present  day,  and  scholars  now  recognise  that  practically 
all  the  literature  of  Israel  which  has  come  down  to  us  is  a 
growth,  a  result  of  re-writing  and  re-editing  from  age  to  age, 
and  especially  during  the  centuries  succeeding  the  Exile,  with 
the  inevitable  working  in  of  the  views  of  the  editor  and  his 
age.  The  problem  of  modern  scholarship  is  to  separate  the 
old  from  the  new,  and  to  trace  as  accurately  as  may  be  the 
process  of  development. 

Nor  is  this  growth  of  Hebrew  literature  a  thing  unique. 
We  find  a  similar  growth  among  other  peoples.  A  comparison 
is  often  made  between  the  Pentateuch,  with  its  four  main  docu- 
ments, as  determined  by  critical  scholars,  with  the  Diatessaron 
of  Tatian,  at  one  time  in  common  use  in  the  Syrian  Church. 
Tatian  made  a  harmony  of  the  four  Gospels,  forming  a  con- 
secutive story  of  the  Life  of  Christ.  This  met  with  such 
popular  approval  that  at  one  time  it  threatened  to  supplant 
the  individual  Gospels  altogether  in  the  Syrian  Church.  The 
process  by  which  Tatian  united  the  four  Gospels  is  almost 
identical  with  the  process  by  which  the  four  great  documents 
of  the  Pentateuch  have  been  united  into  one ;  only  in  the 
former  case  the  individual  documents  still  continued  to  exist 
as  such,  and  ultimately  resumed  their  place  in  the  Church, 
while  in  the  case  of  the  Pentateuch  the  individual  documents 
were  lost  and  the  harmony  alone  preserved. 

Valuable  for  the  light  which  it  throws  on  the  growth  of 
Hebrew  legislation  and  the  conceptions  which  permitted  the 
frequent  modification  and  enlargement  of  codes  of  laws  which 
still  continued  to  be  ascribed  to  one  original  law -maker, 
Moses,  is  a  comparison  of  the  laws  of  the  Pentateuch  with 
the  collections  of  early  Enghsh  laws,  the  dooms  or  judg- 
ments, put  forth  by  the  kings  of  Kent  or  Wessex.  King 
Alfred  tells  us  that  he  collected  such  dooms  together,  and 
"  commanded  many  of  those  to  be  written  which  our  fore- 
fathers held,   those  which  to  me  seemed  good ;   and   many 


MODERN  STUDY  OF  THE  BIBLE  97 

of  those  which  seemed  to  me  not  good  I  rejected  them, — 
and  in  otherwise  commanded  them  to  be  holden."  Alfred's 
dooms  begin  with  the  Ten  Commandments  and  the  legislation 
of  what  is  now  known  as  the  Book  of  the  Covenant,  Exodus 
xxi.-xxiii. ;  but  the  Hebrew  laws  are  handled  with  the 
greatest  freedom,  and  adapted  to  the  conditions  of  the  time 
without  the  slightest  hint  that  any  change  has  been  made. 
The  dooms  of  Alfred  are,  in  fact,  a  growth,  based  upon  the 
Bible  legislation,  but  with  additions  and  changes,  representing 
many  ages  and  many  hands.  If  we  had  those  dooms  alone, 
without  the  Bible  with  which  to  compare  them,  we  should  be 
sorely  at  a  loss  to  determine  what  was  taken  from  the  Hebrew 
and  what  is  of  later  date ;  and  even  now  it  is  impossible  to 
decide  what  is  to  be  ascribed  to  Alfred  and  what  to  his  prede- 
cessors. He  played  in  the  formation  of  those  dooms  much 
the  same  part  which  Ezra  played  in  the  formation  of  the  Law. 
Somewhat  similar  to  the  story  of  Alfred's  dooms  is  the 
story  of  the  growth  of  the  Saxon  Chronicle.  This  was 
originally  a  series  of  annals,  written  in  Latin,  dealing,  for 
the  most  part,  with  local  events.  Alfred  undertook  to  make 
it  accessible  to  the  unlearned  by  a  translation  into  the 
English  tongue,  and  in  the  translation  fresh  material  was 
added  to  the  original  Chronicle  drawn  from  other  sources. 
Just  as  the  Hebrew  story  was  carried  back  ultimately  to  the 
Creation,  and  Hebrew  history  made  to  start  with  that  event, 
so  this  Saxon  Chronicle  was  carried  back  to  the  Incarnation, 
and  the  history  of  England  brought  into  connexion  with 
that  new  Creation  of  the  world.  Neither  did  the  Chronicle 
stop  with  Alfred's  time.  Copies  were  deposited  in  different 
monasteries,  and  continuators  carried  forward  the  record. 
Special  events  were  noted  in  different  places,  and  we  have 
schools  of  chroniclers,  belonging  clearly  to  different  localities, 
although  we  are  quite  unable  to  determine  the  individual 
hands  by  whom  the  different  histories  were  written.  The 
historical  books  of  Israel  were  written  in  precisely  the  same 
way,  except  that  only  one  compilation  ultimately  came  down 
to  us.     The  rest  are  lost. 

H 


98  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Nor  is  it  only  England  which,  in  its  early  laws  and  early 
history,  furnishes  a  parallel  to  the  growth  of  Hebrew  laws 
and  Hebrew  historical  writing.  The  literature  of  India,  as 
we  now  know,  was  composed  in  a  somewhat  similar  way, 
and  the  more  extensive  our  knowledge  of  the  laws  and 
history  and  literature  of  early  peoples  becomes,  the  more 
examples  we  find  of  that  very  method  of  literary  growth, 
which  critical  scholars  of  the  Old  Testament  have  ascertained 
to  be  the  method  of  the  formation  of  Hebrew  literature. 

Much  work  remains  to  be  done,  and  the  opposition  to 
this  method  of  treating  the  Old  Testament  is  not  yet  entirely 
overcome.  The  ideas  and  the  prejudices  of  an  earlier  period 
still  remain  powerful;  but  it  may  be  fairly  said  that  in  the 
methods  of  study  and  the  main  results  of  critical  analysis 
and  historical  reconstruction  Bible  scholars  are  agreed.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  must  be  admitted  that  many  questions 
of  detail  are  still  unsettled,  and  that  there  is  a  tendency 
among  critical  students  of  the  Old  Testament  at  the  present 
moment  to  subdivide  too  minutely,  to  depend  too  much 
on  speculative,  subjective  criteria,  to  discard  tradition  without 
sufficient  cause,  and  to  assign  everything  to  a  later  date 
without  discrimination. 


CHAPTER   VI 
THE    RELIGIOUS    EVOLUTION    OF    ISRAEL 

HOW  you  and  I  as  children  pored  over  the  tales  of  the 
patriarchs  and  heroes  of  the  Bible — Abraham,  Isaac, 
and  Jacob !  Ah,  the  tricks  and  cunning  of  Jacob  !  How 
we  admired  and  disapproved,  became  unconscious  partisans 
for  or  against  him,  the  wily  Odysseus  of  Hebrew  story !  And 
again,  the  tale  of  Joseph.  Most  of  us  were  with  him  from 
beginning  to  end ;  but  I  am  afraid  that  on  some  of  us,  when 
we  were  children,  he  made  the  same  impression  which  the 
good  heroes  of  Sunday-school  books  seem  to  have  made  on 
Mark  Twain.  We  rebelled  against  him;  he  was  too  good. 
His  robe  of  many  colours  and  his  dreams  were  a  personal 
affront,  and  we  did  want  to  take  him  down  a  peg,  because  we 
knew  that  he  was  setting  himself  up  as  better  than  ourselves. 
And  then  the  heroes  of  Israel.  Oh,  what  a  charming  passage 
that  used  to  be  about  Gideon's  victory  over  the  Midianites ! 
I  am  sure  some  of  us  tried  to  "  lap  water  with  his  tongue,  as  a 
dog  lappeth."  We  had  an  idea  that  it  would  be  a  sort  of  test 
of  energy  and  courage.  We  would  have  liked,  too,  to  break 
one  of  our  mother's  earthen  pots  in  the  night,  and  swing 
a  light,  and  blow  a  horn,  and  shout  to  scare  the  Midianites. 
That  was  fine !  And  when  we  read  about  Jephthah's  vow,  to 
sacrifice  what  met  him  when  he  came  home,  and  how  it  fell 
out  that  his  daughter  met  him,  you  remember  well  the  in- 
voluntary comparison  you  made,  feeling  as  though  it  must 
be  wrong  to  do  so,  with  the  story  of  Beauty  and  the  Beast. 
When  you  had  read  the  story  of  Elisha,  you  felt  despite 
yourself  a  sympathy  with  the  boys  who  were  torn  to  pieces  by 

99 


lOo   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

the  bears,  a  personal  sympathy,  for  you  had  done  the  same 
thing,  and  you  certainly  did  not  feel  that  the  misdeed  was 
so  terrible  as  to  merit  death.  I  wonder  if,  when  you  were 
a  good  child,  on  Sunday  afternoons  you  were  allowed  to  take 
the  big  Bible,  turn  to  the  Apocrypha,  and  read  the  story 
of  Bel  and  the  Dragon,  and  whether  you  were  quite  clear 
in  your  mind  as  to  the  distinction  between  that  and  some 
of  Grimm's  fairy  tales  ? 

You  read  those  same  stories  now,  but  they  are  not  quite  the 
same.  You  surely  must  remember  what  a  wonder  and  delight 
they  were  to  you  in  childhood,  however,  and  the  strange  mean- 
ings they  conveyed  to  you.  But  they  did  teach  you.  You  did 
not  care  for  Amos,  and  Hosea,  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  and  Ezekiel 
then,  and  Leviticus  and  Deuteronomy  were  dead  letters.  The 
lore  of  the  child-world  best  taught  the  childish  mind. 

We  have  progressed;  an  evolution  has  taken  place  in  our 
religious  thoughts  since  childhood.  We  have  all  learned  now 
to  find  progress,  development,  evolution  in  all  things — in 
ourselves,  in  the  physical  or  natural  world,  in  thought,  in 
ethics,  in  civilisation,  in  religion.  We  find  ourselves  believing 
in  a  development  of  religion  in  the  world  from  childhood 
to  maturity,  just  as  we  have  known  it  in  ourselves.  And 
we  find  ourselves  involuntarily,  almost  unconsciously,  com- 
paring religious  ideas,  rites,  and  ceremonies.  Such  a  word  as 
Easter  of  itself  forces  comparison  in  our  minds.  The  fact 
that  the  name  of  the  greatest  of  Christian  feasts  is  the  name  of 
an  old  Teutonic  goddess  leads  us  to  think  with  kindliness 
of  the  pagan  faith  which  gave  us  that  name.  Christmas  and 
All  Hallowe'en  are  connected  with  customs  having  their 
acknowledged  origin  in  paganism.  A  few  summers  since 
I  found  the  Armenians  celebrating  the  Transfiguration  festival 
by  ascending  hills  and  mountains,  and  throwing  water  on  one 
another.  On  investigation,  I  ascertained  that  both  in  date  and 
mode  of  celebration  their  Transfiguration  corresponded  to  the 
old  Persian  feast  of  Abrizan.  The  early  missionaries  adopted 
that  feast  bodily,  and  connected  it  with  the  Transfiguration, 
because  of  the  practice  of  ascending  mountains. 


THE  RELIGIOUS  EVOLUTION   OF   ISRAEL       loi 

Whoever  has  travelled  has  seen  much  of  this.  He  has  seen 
the  old  pagan  polytheism  still  surviving  under  Christian  forms 
and  names.  On  every  Greek  island  where  a  fane  of  Apollo 
once  crowned  the  heights  he  finds  the  similar  St.  George 
worshipped,  while  close  to  the  sea  St.  Nicholas  has  assumed 
the  heritage  of  Poseidon.  On  the  Asiatic  side  of  the 
Bosphorus,  opposite  Therapia,  you  see  on  a  high  hill  the 
Moslem  sacred  tomb  of  the  huge  toe  of  that  colossal  saint, 
Joshua  son  of  Nun.  To  the  Christians  the  same  tomb  was 
the  wonder-working  tomb  of  St.  Pantaleon ;  and  to  the  heathen 
Greeks  it  was  equally  sacred  as  the  Bed  of  Heracles.  So 
at  Smyrna  Christians  and  Mussulmans  alike  worship  at  the 
tomb  of  Polycarp,  each  a  different  saint;  while  at  Baghdad 
the  same  shrine  serves  Jew  and  Moslem  for  the  worship 
respectively  of  Joshua  son  of  Jozedek  and  of  St.  Yusuf.  Jonah 
has  succeeded  Dagon  and  Cannes,  and  Astarte  has  given 
place  to  St.  Mary,  St.  Anna,  and  other  virgin  saints ;  but  under 
different  names  the  old  sacred  places  and  something  of  the 
old  worship  still  linger  on.  You  see  to-day  the  same  sort 
of  sacred  trees  and  sacred  stone-heaps  which  you  read  about 
alike  in  the  sacred  and  profane  literature  of  the  Orient  and 
a  survival  at  least  of  the  old  rites  connected  with  their  cult. 
In  Palestine  religion  has  followed  religion,  but  the  old  sacred 
places,  and  many  of  the  ancient  sacred  practices,  still  linger  on; 
places  and  customs  that  were  sacred  long  before  Israel  entered 
Canaan. 

The  most  casual  reader  of  the  Old  Testament  can  scarcely 
fail  to  see  that  Israel  borrowed  many  of  its  sacred  places  from 
heathen  antiquity.  One  city,  which  plays  a  part  as  a  sort 
of  sacred  city  in  the  history  of  the  ark,  and  which  is  called 
a  city  of  the  Levites,  is  Beth  Shemesh,  "  house  of  the  sun-god." 
(There  are  at  least  two  more  cities  of  the  same  name  in 
Palestine,  showing  the  popularity  of  this  cult.)  Another 
Levitical  city  was  called  Anathoth,  place  of  the  goddess  Anah, 
or  Anath.  Another  Levitical  city,  which  was  also  a  sanctuary, 
or  place  of  refuge  for  the  man  who  had  committed  man- 
slaughter, was  Kedesh,  which  means  '* sanctuary."     Now,  as  the 


I02    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

name  existed  before  the  Hebrew  period,  it  is  manifest  that 
it  was  a  sanctuary  in  the  pre-Israelitic  times.  Qishon  was 
a  sacred  river  before  the  time  of  the  IsraeUtes,  bearing  the 
name  of  an  obscure  divinity,  Qish,  or  Qaish,  which  also 
appears  in  the  name  of  the  father  of  Saul,  and  which  we 
meet  among  the  heathen  Arabs ;  and  from  the  song  of 
Deborah  we  find  that  this  river  retained  some  sort  of  reputa- 
tion for  sanctity  among  the  IsraeHtes  of  her  day.  Indeed, 
in  a  land  where  fountains  and  perennial  streams  are  rare,  all 
such  tend  to  be  held  sacred  and  regarded  as  special  mani- 
festations of  a  divine  force.  So  the  Jordan  was  sacred,  and 
more  particularly  its  fountain-sources  at  the  foot  of  Hermon, 
from  the  most  remote  antiquity.  This  sanctity  was  taken 
over  by  the  Hebrews,  and  this  it  was  which  led  to  the  erection 
at  Dan,  the  sacred  sources  of  Jordan,  of  one  of  the  two  great 
temples  of  northern  Israel.  Long  after  that  temple  had 
vanished,  under  a  different  cult,  the  sources  of  Jordan  were 
sacred  to  Pan,  and  the  remnants  of  a  shrine  of  that  god  exist 
there  to  this  day,  while  the  place  itself  is  still  called  Banias, 
after  the  name  of  Pan.  A  curious  and  interesting  reference  to 
the  sanctity  of  the  spot  and  its  fountains  is  contained  in 
Psalm  xlii.  Compare  with  this  that  ancient  song  of  a  well  in 
the  Book  of  Numbers  (xxi.  17,  18),  beginning,  "Spring  up, 
well;  sing  ye  to  it."  Hermon  itself  was  an  ancient  sacred 
mountain  (its  name  means  "devoted,"  or  "separated"),  as  was 
also  Carmel,  and,  in  general,  every  isolated,  high  hill.  It  is 
interesting  to  find  two  mountains  sacred  from  the  earliest 
time,  one  of  them  certainly  from  pre-Israelitic  times,  namely 
Nebo  and  Sinai,  bearing  names  familiar  in  Babylonia.  Nebo 
is  the  name  of  the  god  Nebo,  or  Nabu,  the  god  of  prophecy, 
whose  name  forms  a  component  part  of  the  royal  names, 
Nebuchadrezzar,  Nabonidus,  etc.  The  other,  Sinai,  bears  the 
name  of  the  ancient  moon-god,  Sin,  the  especial  god  of  Ur, 
the  birthplace  of  Abraham. 

The  permanence  of  locality  in  connexion  with  worship 
is  a  well-established  fact.  A  place  or  object  once  regarded 
as   holy  will   retain    its   sanctity,   even    though    the    religion 


THE  RELIGIOUS  EVOLUTION  OF   ISRAEL       103 

which  sanctified  it  and  the  ceremonies  of  its  cult  change 
entirely. 

And  now,  having  considered  places  of  worship,  let  us  note 
some  points  connected  with  the  manner  of  worship  of  God. 
All  flesh-eating  was  sacrifice  in  early  times.  We  have  an 
example  of  the  primitive  Hebrew  idea  regarding  this  in  the 
case  of  Saul  after  the  victory  over  the  Philistines  near  Mich- 
mash  (i  Sam.  xiv.  31  ff).  His  men  were  very  hungry,  and 
began  to  kill  and  eat  without  any  recognition  of  God.  Saul 
was  horrified,  and  setting  up  a  stone  as  the  representation 
of  Deity,  caused  them  to  bring  and  kill  the  beasts  there, 
the  blood  being  poured  out  upon  or  before  the  stone,  which 
thus  received  it  for  God.  This  conception  of  all  flesh-eating 
as  sacrifice  still  survives  among  the  Arabs,  even  town  Arabs, 
in  language,  and,  to  some  extent,  in  fact.  My  workmen  often 
asked  me  to  "sacrifice"  an  ox  or  a  sheep  for  them.  And 
if  I  went  to  a  chief's  camp  a  sheep  was  "  sacrificed  "  for  me. 
So  also  people,  both  Christians  and  Moslems,  sacrifice  a  sheep 
at  some  ziara^  inviting  all  to  eat  of  the  flesh;  and  the  flesh 
eaten  on  such  occasions  is  practically  the  only  flesh  that  the 
common  people  eat.  Leviticus  xvii.  shows  a  similar  condition 
among  the  ancient  Hebrews.  The  Hebrew  name  for  altar, 
it  will  be  noticed,  is  "place  of  killing,"  and  this,  together 
with  the  fact  that  the  words  for  kill  and  sacrifice  are  the 
same,  is  in  itself  sufficient  evidence  of  the  early  Hebrew  idea. 
But  as  early  as  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy  these  primitive 
conditions  change,  giving  place  to  a  higher  and  more  luxurious 
method  of  life. 

The  early  idea  of  God  as  connected  by  blood  with  the 
worshipper  lends  itself  to  the  idea  of  God  as  the  head  of  the 
family,  or  family  gods ;  of  which  we  see  a  trace  in  Jonathan's 
excuse  for  David's  absence  from  Saul's  table,  viz.  that  he  had 
to  go  to  take  part  in  a  family  sacrifice.  A  little  higher  in  the 
scale  of  advancing  civilisation  is  a  tribal  god,  then  a  national, 
and  from  this  one  advances  a  further  step  to  true  monotheism. 
The  popular  religion  of  Israel  up  to  the  time  of  the  written 
prophets  had  not  advanced  beyond  the  national  stage,  and  we 


104  THE  OLDsTESTAAlENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

find  abundant  traces  of  the  family,  clan,  and  tribal  stages. 
Some  of  the  Divine  names  which  we  find  in  use  may  connect 
themselves  with  such  tribal  and  family  uses.  I  have  already 
pointed  out  that  Kish  is  a  Divine  name;  so  also  are  David 
and  Solomon.  Again,  we  find  appellatives  used  as  the  names 
of  Divinity,  thus  Ab,  "father"  as  in  Abram ;  Melech,  "king" 
(written  in  late  Hebrew  usage,  "Moloch"  when  used  of  a 
separate  Deity,  by  way  of  differentiation),  as  Melchizedek;  Baal, 
Adonis,  etc. 

Again,  we  find  a  localisation  of  the  Divinity.  We  find  this 
in  one  form  in  the  idea  that  Yahaweh,  or  Yehu,  was  specially 
connected  with  the  soil  of  Palestine,  as  when  David  says  that 
if  Saul  drive  him  out  of  the  land,  he  drives  him  away  from 
the  face  of  Yahaweh,  and  forces  him  to  worship  the  gods  ot 
the  land  to  which  he  shall  flee  (i  Sam.  xxvi.  19).  Or  when 
Naaman  begs  some  of  the  soil  of  Israel,  that  he  may  worship 
the  God  of  Israel  in  Damascus  (2  Kings  v.  17).  Another 
form  of  localisation  is  the  attaching  to  certain  places  of  a 
peculiar  sanctity  as  dwelling-places,  or  haunts,  or  places  of 
special  manifestation  of  the  Divinity.  So  Bethel  is  the  house 
of  God,  the  gate  of  the  heavens  (Gen.  xxviii.  17).  Fountains 
are  peculiarly  sacred  as  places  where  God  comes  forth  from 
the  earth  to  men,  like  Beersheba  and  Dan.  High  places, 
as  places  where  He  comes  down  from  the  heavenly  to  the 
earthly  heights.  All  are  familiar  with  the  high  places,  the 
bavwth  of  pre-prophetic  times  in  Israel  and  Judah,  and  I 
have  already  pointed  out  how  many  of  these  holy  places  were 
inherited  from  pre-Israelitic  times.  But  not  only  the  places, 
the  cults  also  were  inherited.  All  this  naturally  resulted  in 
a  practical  polytheism.  Indeed,  the  conditions  were  in  many 
respects  comparable  with  those  in  Spain,  Italy,  Russia,  Greece, 
and  Turkey  at  the  present  day.  The  virgin  of  this  place  and 
the  virgin  of  that,  the  white  virgin  and  the  black  virgin,  are 
exactly  paralleled  by  the  Assyrian  Ishtar  of  Arbela,  Ishtar  of 
Nineveh,  Ishtar  of  Erech,  etc.  In  Spain  a  common  man 
holds  more  holy  in  practice  the  local  saint  at  whose  shrine 
he  offers  prayer  in  all  his  need,  and  whose  relics  have  wrought 


THE  RELIGIOUS  EVOLUTION  OF  ISRAEL       105 

those  miracles  of  which  he  often  hears  and  whose  evidence 
he  sees,  than  the  Christ  by  whose  name  he  calls  himself.  He 
might  swear  falsely  by  Christ,  but  scarcely  by  the  relics  of  his 
local  saint,  or  virgin.  So  it  is  in  Islam.  Some  of  our  men 
stole  antiquities.  They  were  examined  by  the  oath  on  the 
Koran,  and  the  chief  culprit,  a  specially  holy  man,  who  bore 
the  title  Hajji,  as  one  who  had  made  the  pilgrimage  to  Mecca, 
swore  falsely.  Then  they  were  all  taken  to  the  local  shrine 
of  a  dead  saint,  unknown  except  in  that  region ;  but  of  that 
oath  the  culprit  was  afraid.  So  it  was  among  the  Hebrews. 
Remember,  for  example,  the  oath  of  Beersheba.  In  other 
words,  there  was  practical  polytheism.  And  yet  in  the  same 
way  in  which  a  Spanish  or  a  Mesopotamian  peasant  would 
to-day  tell  you  that  he  is  a  monotheist,  the  average  Hebrew 
would  and  could  have  told  you  the  same  thing.  He  had, 
in  a  vague  and  inconsistent  way,  an  idea  of  a  divine  some- 
thing underlying  everything.  He  would  tell  you  of  the  heroes 
who  were  sons  of  the  gods  and  the  daughters  of  men ;  but 
the  gods  of  his  thought  were  superhuman  beings,  rather  than 
the  Deity  itself.  He  was  at  once  a  monotheist  and  a  poly- 
theist.  Of  course,  when  brought  into  direct  contact  with 
foreign  polytheisms,  he  was  in  danger  of  accepting  polytheism 
outright,  as  we  find  it  adopted  in  the  days  especially  of  Amon 
and  Manasseh.  And  yet  it  must  be  admitted  that  even  a 
gross  polytheism,  like  that  of  India,  or  that  of  Assyria,  shows 
a  monotheistic  thought  prevailing  in  the  more  spiritual  and 
mystic  interpretations  of  its  forms  and  doctrines. 

Every  early  religion  shows  the  worship  of  nature,  and 
naturally.  It  is  the  simplest  development  of  the  animistic 
idea  which  underHes  all  primitive  religious  thought.  The 
various  processes  of  nature  seem  to  involve  a  life  behind 
them.  The  bubbling  fountain,  the  flowing  stream,  the  tree 
that  grows  as  a  man  grows,  and  puts  forth  twigs  and  leaves 
and  fruit,  and  dies  and  rises  again — do  not  these  show  a 
life  as  real  as  the  life  of  man  ?  And  if  separate  from  his  body 
there  exists  a  soul,  a  life  principle,  must  there  not  be  such 
a  spiritual  existence  to  explain  their  life,  inhabiting  them  as 


io6   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

its  body,  and  perhaps  perishing  with  their  death?  Here,  of 
course,  you  have  the  Greek  dryads,  nymphs,  etc.  Again,  the 
mrtions  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  and  their  relation  to  the 
world  and  the  affairs  of  men,  gave  rise  to  the  belief  in  mighty 
spiritual  powers  inhabiting  and  informing  those  bodies.  In 
late  Hebrew  writings,  of  the  period  beginning  with  the  close 
of  the  Exile,  you  see  a  conception  of  spirits  of  the  heavenly 
bodies,  which  correspond  to  certain  earthly  existences.  But 
this  seems  to  be  drawn  from  Babylonian  and  Persian  ideas, 
and  not  to  be  a  native  Hebrew  development.  Similarly  the 
worship  of  the  heavenly  bodies  seems  to  be  borrowed  from 
without.  In  their  treatment  of  the  spirits  of  trees,  fountains, 
and  the  like,  the  Hebrews,  and  indeed  the  Semites  in  general, 
differ  from  the  Greeks.  The  sacred  tree,  the  fountain,  the 
sacred  stone,  the  cherubim,  and  the  like  are  inhabited  by 
Divinity,  but  underlying  this  polytheism  there  is  a  monotheistic 
idea.  Again,  there  are  spiritual  existences — satyrs,  shedim^ 
azazel,  spirits  whom  Yahaweh  sends  out,  angels;  but  all  is 
vague  and  unformulated,  and  by  that  very  fact  we  escape 
definite,  theological  polytheism,  mythology,  or  even  de- 
monology.  The  latter  grows  up  later  under  foreign  influences 
grafted  on  the  original  Hebrew  thought-stock.  But  nature- 
worship  is  strongly  felt.  Pictures  like  those  of  Psalms  xviii. 
and  xxix.  are  not  mere  poetic  figures.  Yahaweh  especially 
manifests  Himself  in  the  thunderstorm.  The  thunder  is  His 
voice.  He  inhabits  a  central  place  in  the  midst  of  the  dark- 
ness of  the  storm-clouds.  The  lightning  is  the  glimpse  of  the 
brightness  of  His  presence.  He  rides  in  the  storm.  The 
clouds  are  the  heavenly  cherubim,  containers  of  His  presence. 
In  the  Temple  this  idea  was  represented  by  the  mysterious 
dark  chamber,  the  Holy  of  Holies,  where  He  dwelt.  Ezekiel, 
even,  distinctly  recognises  this  meaning,  and  this  connexion 
between  thunder-cloud  and  Holy  of  Holies. 

But  Semitic  nature-worship  particularly  took  the  form  of 
worship  of  the  reproductive  powers  of  nature,  and  developed 
in  directions  which  we  regard  as  obscene.  The  dualism  of 
sex   is   very   prominent    in   Semitic   polytheism.      We   know 


THE  RELIGIOUS  EVOLUTION  OF  ISRAEL       107 

this  for  the  Babylonian  from  Greek  writers,  and  also  from 
the  numberless  obscene  symbols  and  figures   unearthed  on 
every  old  Babylonian  site.    Phoenician  and  Aramaean  practices 
we  know  from  Greek  writers  and  from  the  Bible  to  have  been 
obscene.     What  about  the  Hebrews  ?     We  find  among  them, 
according  to  the  testimony  of  the  Bible,  practices  which  we 
know  were  connected  with  obscenity  among  other  nations,  like 
the  lamentation  for  Tammuz.      Again,  we  find  that  in  the 
Temple  at  Jerusalem  the  same  abominations  were  practised 
in  Josiah's  day  which  we  find  among  the  Phcenicians  and 
Syrians  in  Astarte  or  Ashteroth  worship,  and   it  is  possible 
that  the  narrative  must  be  interpreted  as  meaning  that  these 
abominations  had  been  practised  ever  since  Solomon's  time, 
i.e.  during  the  whole  period  of  the  existence  of  the  first  Temple, 
with  a  brief  intermission  in  Hezekiah's  day.     It  is  ordinarily 
supposed  that  these  abominations  were  directly  borrowed  from 
other  religions.     The  tnazzebah  and  asherah,  conventionalised 
symbols,  must,  however,  be  recognised  as  part  of  the  common 
Semitic  inheritance.     The  asherah  is  a  tree,  or  else  a  con- 
ventionalised  representation  of   a  tree,   a   mere   pole.     The 
mazzebah  was   a   stone  object.      They  were  finally  expelled 
from  Yahaweh  worship  in  the  prophetic  period. 

Circumcision  belongs  in  origin  to  the  same  general  cate- 
gory; but  it  is  difficult  to  tell  how  much,  if  any,  of  its 
original  significance  existed  for  even  the  very  earliest  Hebrew 
times.  It  appears  as  a  sacred  national  mark,  and  assumes 
the  form  of  a  blood  covenant.  It  is  not  apparently  an  original 
Semitic  practice,  but  something  derived  from  Egypt. 

The  great  feasts  of  the  Hebrews  are  in  so  far  akin  to 
nature-worship  as  that  they  are  connected  with  events  of 
nature,  the  yield  of  the  earth.  In  a  general  way  they  can  be 
paralleled  by  the  feasts  of  other  peoples.  With  these  natural 
events  are  combined,  in  the  case  of  the  Passover  and  Taber- 
nacles, certain  historical  reminiscences.  The  new  moon,  a 
very  popular  feast,  but  not  equally  recognised  in  legislation, 
is  more  distinctly  a  nature-feast.  It  is,  however,  of  universal 
observance,  and  not  merely  Semitic.     The  sanctity  of  seven, 


io8    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

and  apparently  also  of  the  Sabbath,  appears  in  Babylonia  as 
well  as  among  the  Jews. 

The  idea  of  clean  and  unclean  is  a  universal  primitive  idea, 
and  in  many  of  the  details  of  their  laws  of  clean  and  unclean 
we  find  the  Hebrews  in  close  accord  with  other  Semitic 
peoples.  It  would,  in  reality,  be  better  described  as  a  custom 
of  taboo  than  of  clean  or  unclean.  The  touching  of  a  holy 
thing  made  a  man  unclean  as  much  as  the  touching  of  an  un- 
holy or  anti-holy  thing.  What  we  call  unclean  was  a  thing  set 
apart  from  man's  use,  not  necessarily  unclean  in  the  ordinary 
sense  of  that  word.  Both  the  connexion  of  Hebrew  use  with 
that  of  other  Semitic  peoples,  and  also  the  peculiarities  of  the 
Hebrew  use  itself,  are  well  illustrated  in  the  matter  of  unclean, 
or  taboo  articles  of  food.  The  swine  was  in  general  taboo 
among  the  Semites,  but  that  taboo  was  in  its  origin  due  to  the 
sanctity,  not  the  uncleanness  of  the  creature.  Sayce,  in  his 
Hibbert  lectures  on  Babylonian  religion,  has  pointed  out 
from  the  inscriptions  the  peculiar  sanctity  or  taboo  of  the 
swine  at  Nippur.  This  was  corroborated  by  our  excavations ; 
for  we  found  the  boar  a  favourite  object  of  votive  tablets  for 
the  Temple  of  Bel.  It  enjoyed  a  peculiar  sanctity,  and  there- 
fore was  forbidden  to  be  eaten  as  ordinary  food  of  men.  In 
the  list  of  forbidden  animals  among  the  Hebrews  occurs  the 
coney,  or  rock  badger  {shapha^i).  This  creature  we  find  to 
have  been  sacred  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Sinai.  The  hare, 
forbidden  to  the  Hebrews,  we  find  as  a  sacred  animal  among 
some  at  least  of  the  other  Semitic  peoples.  The  origin  of 
this  sanctity  in  the  case  of  the  swine  and  hare  may  have 
been  fecundity,  which,  with  the  tendency  among  the  Semites 
to  the  worship  of  the  reproductive  powers  of  nature,  would 
naturally  lead  to  their  sanctification  or  taboo.  Among  the 
Hebrews,  with  their  tendency  away  from  nature-worship,  the 
fact  of  taboo  remained  after  the  cause  had  disappeared,  and 
the  animals  became  unclean  in  our  sense  of  the  word  unclean, 
unholy  and  polluting.  The  taboo  on  other  creatures  in  the 
Hebrew  lists  was  due  to  various  causes :  sometimes  to  old 
religious  uses,  sometimes  to  dirty  habits,  sometimes  to  frightful 


THE  RELIGIOUS  EVOLUTION  OF   ISRAEL       109 

or  disgusting  appearance,  sometimes  to  the  great  value  of 
the  creatures  for  other  purposes,  or  to  their  rarity.  Such 
laws  of  clean  and  unclean  all  nations  and  localities  possess, 
only  in  an  unformulated  condition.  Compare  the  common 
feeling  among  English  and  Americans  about  frogs,  snails, 
horseflesh,  and  the  like.  The  Hebrew  put  everything  on 
the  basis  of  religion,  and  indeed  all  primitive  societies  do 
so  now.  The  words  of  a  Turkish  provincial  governor  to  me 
furnish  a  good  example  of  this.  I  was  dining  with  him  in 
his  so-called  palace.  He  gave  me  a  spoon,  but  was  himself 
obliged  by  his  "religion,"  as  he  said,  to  eat  with  his  fingers. 
We  should  have  said  custom,  habit,  or  training  where  he  said 

religion. 

The  question  of  the  taboo,  or  the  clean  and  unclean,  brings 
us  to  the  relations  of  God  and  man  and  the  conception  of  sin. 
The  common  conception  of  sin  in  the  mind  of  the  ordinary 
primitive  Hebrew,  much  like  that  in  the  mind  of  any  primitive, 
uncivilised  or  semi-civilised  man,  was  that  of  offending  God 
by  breaking  some  of  those  rules  which  we  should  regard  as 
external  and  arbitrary.     The  prophetic  writings  show  us  very 
distinctly  that  such  was  the  popular  idea  of  sin.     It  was  the 
breach  of  such  laws  which  aroused  the  anger  of  God.     You 
find  the  same  conception  in  the  Babylonian  penitential  psalms. 
There  is  a  bitter,  heart-rending  cry  of  sin ;  but  when  you  ask 
what  is  the  sin,  you  find  it  to  be  the  breach  of  what  we  should 
call  ceremonial  laws.     It  is  a  sin  against  moral  standards  only 
in  a  secondary  degree,  as  they  may  be  regarded  as  involved  in 
that  ceremonial  law.     The  God  whose  laws  of  clean  and  un- 
clean, or  the  like,  have  been  broken  is  wroth,  and  inflicts  sick- 
ness, trouble,  distress.     Such  distress  is  itself  an  evidence  of 
the  wrath  of  God,  and  hence  of  sin.     In  Hebrew,  the  same 
word,  rendered  sometimes  in  our  Bible  "guilt,"  is  used  for  sin 
and  calamity.     A  man  may  have  sinned,  as  he  knows  by  the 
fact  that  calamity  has  come  upon  him,  and  yet  not  know  his 
sin.     So  the  Babylonian  psalmist  cries — 

"  O  God,  the  sin  that  I  know  not  forgive  !  ^ 
O  Goddess,  the  sin  that  I  know  not,  forgive  ! " 


iro   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

The  Book  of  Job  shows  us  in  its  argument  a  prevalence 
among  the  Hebrews  of  this  same  conception,  against  which 
the  writer  argues.  The  same  idea  also  underlies  the  references 
to  "  secret  sins,"  in  Psalms ;  and  in  Leviticus  iv.  we  find  a 
special  ritual  (the  guilt  offering)  for  appeasing  God  when 
calamity  shows  that  a  sin  has  been  committed,  because  of 
which  God  is  wroth,  and  yet  the  sufferer  does  not  know 
wherein  he  has  sinned. 

Among  the  Hebrews  the  punishments  and  rewards  of  sin 
must  be  given  in  this  life.  There  is  no  proper  immortality. 
Their  idea  of  the  condition  after  death  is  derived  from  the 
bloodless,  sad  appearance  of  the  corpse,  just  as  among  the 
early  Greeks  and  among  the  kindred  Semitic  peoples ;  a  con- 
ception which  appears  among  many  primitive  peoples.  You 
will  remember  the  consultation  of  the  shades  in  the  Odyssey, 
and  the  necessity  of  giving  them  blood  to  drink  before  they 
could  speak.  There  was  not  annihilation,  but  a  bloodless, 
gloomy  existence,  such  as  is  described  in  the  Babylonian  poem 
of  the  descent  of  Ishtar  into  Hades.  The  spirits  of  the  dead 
might  be  consulted,  as  in  the  story  of  Saul  and  the  Witch  of 
Endor.  Great  honour,  amounting  in  some  cases  almost  to 
worship,  was  paid  to  the  tombs  of  the  dead,  as,  for  instance, 
the  tombs  of  Abraham,  Isaac,  Joseph,  and  Rachel,  in  the  same 
way  and  to  the  same  extent  as  among  the  Moslem  Arabs  of 
to-day.  This  never,  however,  reached  a  worship  of  ancestors, 
or  even  approximated  to  it.  The  honour  of  a  man  hereafter, 
and  his  comfort  also,  to  some  extent  certainly,  depended  upon 
his  tomb.  It  was  the  greatest  misfortune  to  be  cast  out 
unburied.  Compare  the  story  of  Rizpah  and  her  sons 
(2  Sam.  xxi.),  and  the  dirge  of  Jehoiakim  in  the  book  of 
Jeremiah  (xxii.  18).  Such  immortality  as  there  was  depended 
roughly  on  the  preservation  of  the  integrity  of  the  corpse. 
Presumably  the  same  methods  of  burying  food  and  other 
objects  with  the  dead  prevailed  among  the  Hebrews  as  among 
the  Babylonians. 

And  now  a  word  about  the  methods  and  media  of  com- 
munication with  God  and  the  spirit  world.     Ritual  is  the  code 


THE  RELIGIOUS  EVOLUTION  OF   ISRAEL       in 

regulating  the  relations  between  man  and  the  spiritual  exist- 
ences. The  animistic  conception  is,  as  I  have  already  said, 
fundamental  in  primitive  religions.  Now  when  man  has 
reached  the  point  of  belief  in  the  existence  of  spiritual 
existences  lying  behind  material  things,  he  must  inevitably 
seek  the  means  of  communicating  with  those  existences.  The 
mysterious  occurrences  of  nature  are  connected  with  the  good 
and  evil  which  befall  him  and  traced  to  these  unseen,  but 
evidently  powerful  agencies.  It  becomes  a  matter  of  supreme 
moment,  therefore,  to  enter  into  friendly  relations  with  these 
agencies,  and  to  find  the  means  of  controlling,  or  at  least 
propitiating  them.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  man  reasons  about  what 
is  outside  of  himself  from  his  own  analogy.  What  he  likes 
the  spirit  will  like,  and  vice  versa.  (Sometimes,  however,  he 
reasons  by  an  inverse  process,  ascribing  to  the  spiritual 
agencies  a  nature  the  opposite  of  his  own.  In  any  case,  he 
reasons  and  must  reason  from  his  own  analogy.)  All  things 
are  full  of  latent  meanings,  revealing  the  spiritual  agencies 
within,  or  behind  them.  Anything  unusual  is  a  portent.  More- 
over, as  each  mishap  proceeds  in  some  way  from  these 
spiritual  agencies,  each  mishap  presumably  has  its  portent 
and  warning.  A  man  sets  out  on  an  expedition,  and  meets 
with  ill  luck.  Why  ?  A  hare  had  run  across  his  path.  That 
is  the  only  incident  he  has  noticed,  because  it  had  never 
befallen  him  before.  He  at  once  concludes  that  this  was  a 
portent  of  ill  luck.  The  idea  once  started  is  accepted  as  a  fact 
and  handed  on  through  indefinite  ages ;  not  reasoned  about, 
but  accepted  as  a  fact. 

A  modern  illustration  of  this  acceptance  of  a  custom  as 
a  fact  without  investigation  is  well  supplied  by  the  famous 
story  of  Bismarck  and  the  guard  on  the  grass  plot  at 
St.  Petersburg.  When  visiting  St.  Petersburg  Bismarck 
noticed  a  guard  stationed  on  a  grass  plot  near  nothing,  and 
apparently  guarding  nothing.  Finally  he  asked  the  Czar 
why  the  guard  was  stationed  there.  The  Czar,  when  his 
attention  was  called  to  the  position  of  the  guard,  whom, 
if  he   had   noticed,  he  must  have  seen  hundreds  of  times 


112    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

"^before,  was  unable  to  explain  it,  and  found  himself  on 
consideration  equally  surprised  with  Bismarck.  He  sum- 
moned an  officer,  and  asked  of  him  an  explanation  of  the 
guard,  with  much  the  same  result.  No  one  knew  why  the 
guard  stood  on  the  grass  plot.  The  Czar  becoming  interested 
to  fathom  this  mystery,  after  considerable  investigation  it 
was  discovered  that  during  the  reign  of  some  previous  Czar 
the  Czarina  had  discovered  the  first  violet  in  the  middle 
of  that  grass  plot.  The  then  Czar  had  stationed  a  guard 
there  to  prevent  people  from  trampling  on  the  violet,  and 
the  guard  once  established  had  continued  by  force  of  custom 
ever  since,  although  there  were  no  longer  any  violets  to 
guard.  The  fact  that  something  is  a  custom,  or  that  it 
is  established  by  tradition,  or  that  it  is  ordered  by  authority, 
is  far  more  potent  with  the  immense  majority  of  men  than 
reason.  They  do  not  reason ;  they  accept  what  has  come 
to  them  on  authority,  through  tradition,  or  by  custom. 

Ritual,  as  already  stated,  is  in  its  origin  the  etiquette 
of  man  in  dealing  with  spiritual  agencies.  Now  since  the 
spiritual  agencies  are  merely  spiritualised  men,  or  men 
projected  in  fancy  into  spiritual  existence,  the  etiquette  of 
primitive  man  with  the  spiritual  agencies  is  naturally  based 
on  his  etiquette  with  his  fellow -men.  By  religious  con- 
servatism this  etiquette,  which  was  that  in  use  among 
primitive  men,  and  the  customs  contingent  upon  this  eti- 
quette, are  continued  in  dealings  with  the  spiritual  agencies 
long  after  they  have  ceased  to  be  observed  among  men. 
This  is  well  illustrated  by  the  continued  use  of  flint  knives 
for  religious  purposes  long  after  metal  had  come  into  existence 
for  every  other  use,  a  continuance  observed  in  Hebrew  ritual, 
where  we  find  flint  knives  used  for  circumcision  long  after 
metal  had  come  into  use  for  the  daily  purposes  of  life.  An 
excellent  modern  example  of  this  religious  conservatism  was 
furnished  me  in  an  experience  with  a  Russian  priest.  Acting 
as  interpreter  for  one  of  our  bishops,  I  went  into  the  Holy 
of  Holies,  where  the  priest  exhibited  to  us  the  method  in 
which  everything  was  done,  as  also  the  vestments  used  for 


THE  RELIGIOUS  EVOLUTION  OF  ISRAEL       113 

special  occasions,  some  of  which  were  of  extraordinary 
beauty  and  richness.  The  Bishop  noticed  that  these  garments 
were  fastened  by  cords  and  tapes,  and  that  even  the  cuffs 
were  put  on  in  what  seemed  to  us  a  very  awkward  manner 
by  twisting  a  cord  around  the  arm.  He  requested  me  to 
ask  the  priest  why  they  did  not  use  buttons.  *'0h,"  said 
the  priest,  "  all  we  have  has  come  down  from  apostolic 
times;  the  apostles  did  not  use  buttons."  Modern  clerical 
dress  is  in  its  way  a  survival  of  the  same  sort,  except  that 
it  does  not  come  down  from  the  apostolic  times.  The 
same  high  vests  and  collarless  coats  of  black  which  constitute 
the  so-called  clerical  dress  of  our  clergy  of  to-day  are  the 
regular  costume  of  the  higher  Turkish  officials  in  Con- 
stantinople. European  dress  was  adopted  in  official  circles 
in  Constantinople  during  the  time  of  Mahmoud,  at  which 
time  clothes  of  this  cut  were  in  fashion.  The  fashions  have 
changed  since  then,  but  the  Turkish  officials  and  our  clergy 
have  not  changed.  A  still  more  pronounced  case  of  the 
same  sort  is  the  knee-breeches  and  gaiters  worn  by  our 
higher  dignitaries,  which  come  down  from  a  somewhat  more 
remote  period.  Our  ecclesiastical  vestments  are  a  survival 
of  the  same  kind,  but  still  more  ancient. 

But,  to  turn  from  modern  examples  to  the  study  of  the 
ritual  of  older  periods,  it  should  be  noticed  that  ritual 
antedates  mythological  tales  and  theological  explanations. 
This  is  a  familiar  fact  in  all  religions,  and  no  student  of 
religion  hesitates  to  understand  certain  tales  and  certain 
theological  explanations  which  he  meets  with  in  those 
religions  as  due  to  ritual  practices,  which  some  later-thinking 
age  has  endeavoured  to  explain.  The  same  phenomenon 
is  to  be  met  with  in  Hebrew  history.  The  brazen  serpent 
is  older  than  the  story  of  the  brazen  serpent,  and  many 
incidents  in  the  lives  of  the  patriarchs  are  but  the  explanations 
of  ritual  facts  connected  with  certain  localities  in  Palestine. 
You  find  in  Hebrew  ritual,  as  in  the  ritual  of  every  other 
primitive  people,  survivals  which  have  come  down  from 
prehistoric  times,  examples  of  the  appendix  vermifor??iis,  as 


114   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

it  were,  as  well  as  ancient  practices  entirely  inconsistent 
with  the  general  principles  of  the  ritual  in  which  they  are 
embedded.  As  examples  of  such  survivals  and  manifest 
inconsistencies  in  Hebrew  ritual  I  may  mention  the  scape- 
goat and  Azazel.  A  phenomenon  of  much  interest  in  the 
study  of  ritual  and  the  primitive  law  connected  with  ritual 
is  the  resemblances  existing  between  the  practices  of  regions 
which  can  have  no  possible  connexion  one  with  another. 
The  practice  of  levirate  marriage,  laws  for  which  we  find 
in  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy,  seems  to  be  so  peculiar  in 
its  nature  that  the  student  naturally  supposes  it  to  be  a 
Hebrew  development  dissimilar  to  anything  else;  but  we 
find  precisely  the  same  provisions  in  the  laws  of  Manu  in 
India.  Similarly  there  are  a  number  of  most  curious  and 
close  coincidences  between  the  provisions  of  the  code  of  the 
Book  of  the  Covenant  (Exod.  xxi.-xxiii.)  and  the  oldest 
Greek  and  Roman  laws.  Anyone  who  will  take  up  a  good 
modern  commentary  will  be  surprised  to  find  how  many 
of  the  provisions  of  that  old  code  are  identical  with  the 
provisions  of  the  Ten  Tables  at  Rome,  the  old  Solonic 
code  of  Athens,  or  the  laws  of  Lycurgus  at  Sparta.  It  mil 
be  observed  that  the  resemblance  is  always  closest  in  the 
oldest  strata,  and  this  is  due  not  to  any  primitive  contact 
between  the  different  peoples,  but  to  the  similar  development 
of  ideas  which  are  natural  to  the  human  race. 

Animism,  the  idea  that  there  is  a  spirit  in  everything  which 
exists,  is  universal,  because  man  of  necessity  begins  to  study 
the  universe  from  himself.  He  measures  outside  objects  by 
his  own  body,  in  feet  and  fingers  and  ells.  He  counts  by  his 
body,  making  a  decimal  system  out  of  the  number  of  fingers 
on  his  hands  and  toes  on  his  feet.  So  also,  when  he  has 
realised  the  existence  of  a  vital  principle  within  himself,  in 
some  sort  distinct  from  his  body,  an  am'ma,  he  attributes  to 
everything  which  he  sees  a  similar  spirit,  through  which  it 
lives  and  acts.  It  is  by  a  similar  natural  process  of  reasoning 
that  he  arrives  at  similar  ritual  results  and  propounds  similar 
laws.     But  as  he  develops  further  he  tends  to  differentiate. 


THE  RELIGIOUS  EVOLUTION  OF  ISRAEL       115 

and  so  in  the  higher  strata  of  religious  development  the 
differences  become  more  marked  than  the  resemblances.  The 
laws  of  Manu,  the  early  Hebrew,  Roman,  and  Greek  laws 
resemble  one  another,  or  are  in  many  cases  identical,  because 
in  the  earlier  stages  of  development  the  minds  of  the  Indians, 
the  Hebrews,  the  Greeks,  and  the  Romans  worked  in  the 
same  way,  and  according  to  the  same  fundamental  principles. 

But  to  return  to  Hebrew  ritual,  we  find  upon  analysing  that 
ritual  that  besides  the  general  primitive  and  universal  rites  and 
laws,  there  are  certain  practices  which  are  best  paralleled  by 
Arabic  use,  because  they  are  a  survival  from  the  nomadic 
period  of  Hebrew  history.  There  is,  again,  a  great  body  of 
ritual  which  is  identical  with,  or  very  similar  to  that  of  the 
Phoenicians,  because  it  was  taken  over  from  the  Canaanites 
along  with  the  holy  places  at  which  it  was  observed,  which,  as 
we  have  already  seen,  were  inherited  by  the  Hebrews  from 
their  predecessors.  The  Marseilles  sacrificial  tables  show  us 
that  a  number  of  the  sacrificial  terms  and  rites  in  use  among 
the  Hebrews  were  identical  with  those  in  use  among  the 
Phoenicians.  In  the  name  for  priest  there  is  a  curious 
evidence  of  a  struggle  between  Syrian  and  Phoenician  in- 
fluences. The  Phoenician  name  for  the  priests  was  Kohanim^ 
the  Syrian  name  Ke77iarim,  Both  names  were  in  use  among 
the  Hebrews,  but  the  name  of  Kohanijn  finally  prevailed,  and 
that  of  Kemarwi  came  to  be  applied  to  the  priests  of  the  high 
places,  until  at  length  it  was  used  as  a  term  of  reproach  and 
opprobrium  indicating  false  worshipping.  Still  another  stratum 
of  the  law  shows  a  close  connexion  with  Babylonia.  In  the 
matter  of  the  construction  of  the  Temple  we  find  a  striking 
resemblance  between  Hebrew,  Phoenician,  and  Syrian  uses, 
and  the  excavation  of  Babylonian  temples  shows  us  that  all 
these  are  modifications  of  a  more  primitive  type  existing  there 
and  in  Southern  Arabia.  The  Holy  of  Holies  was  not 
peculiar  to  the  Hebrews,  and  the  pillars  of  Jachin  and  Boaz, 
which  stood  before  the  Hebrew  Temple,  also  stood  before 
Phoenician  and  Syrian  temples,  and  may  be  found  in  a  some- 
what more  primitive  form  in  Arabia.     The  arrangement  of  the 


ii6   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Hebrew  Temple,  by  which  one  progressed  inward  and  upward 
from  court  to  court  until  the  mysterious  Holy  of  Holies  was 
reached,  was  common  to  it  with  the  temples  of  the  Phoenicians 
and  Syrians,  and  was  derived  apparently  from  Babylonian 
sources.  The  altar  standing  in  the  court  in  front  of  the  holy 
place  is  the  common  usage  of  the  Semitic  world.  The  priests 
and  prophets  of  Israel  have  sometimes  been  spoken  of  as 
characteristic  features  of  the  religious  life  of  the  Hebrews. 
But  they  are  the  same,  in  outer  form  at  least,  as  the  priests 
and  soothsayers  of  the  Phoenicians  and  the  Syrians. 

It  may  be  asked.  If  in  all  these  respects  Hebrew  religion  is 
identical  with  the  religion  of  the  nations  round  about,  if  it 
has  rites  which  may  still  be  found  among  the  nomadic  Arabs, 
if  it  has  such  a  body  of  ritual  which  it  has  taken  over  from 
the  Phoenicians  or  the  Babylonians,  what  is  there  that  is 
national,  what  is  there  that  is  peculiar  to  the  Hebrews,  and 
what  part  did  that  Moses  play  to  whom  we  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  ascribe  the  foundation  of  Israel  ?  Moses  was,  in 
fact,  as  the  Bible  states,  the  author  of  both  the  national  Hfe 
and  the  national  religion  of  Israel.  In  European  vine  regions 
they  take  the  American  wild  vine  stock,  and  when  it  has  taken 
root  and  grown  strong  and  healthy,  they  graft  upon  it  some 
fine  variety  of  cultivated  grape.  The  life  and  vigour  are  the 
life  and  vigour  of  the  primitive  American  wild  vine,  but  the 
fruit  is  derived  from  the  new  graft  which  dominates  the  wild 
stock  upon  which  it  has  been  grafted.  Something  like  that 
took  place  in  Israel.  On  the  wild  stock  of  its  prehistoric 
ritual  was  grafted  a  new  and  nobler  element.  This  is  Moses. 
Later,  others,  following  the  example  and  working  in  the  spirit 
of  Moses,  took  grafts  from  him  and  grafted  them  on  the 
Canaanite  stock  as  he  had  been  grafted  on  the  stock  of  the 
prehistoric  ritual.  In  this  way  and  in  this  sense  the  whole 
body  of  Hebrew  ritual  became  Mosaic ;  the  Mosaic  principle 
was  grafted  on  the  stock  of  common  forms.  To  illustrate 
how  this  was  done,  let  me  use  one  example  only.  We  read 
much  of  the  ark  in  Hebrew  story,  but  the  ark  is  not  peculiar 
to  the  Hebrews.     It  was  used  in  Egypt  and  in  Babylonia  also. 


THE  RELIGIOUS  EVOLUTION   OF   ISRAEL       117 

It  was  the  ship  for  the  transportation  of  the  divinity  or  his 
symbols.  Taking  such  ship  or  ark,  Moses  placed  in  it,  instead 
of  an  image  symbolising  divinity,  two  tables  of  stone  contain- 
ing the  ten  words.  In  ritual  practice,  at  least  until  the  time 
of  its  capture  by  the  Philistines,  this  ark  was  carried  about  by 
the  Israelites  in  the  same  way  in  which  other  peoples  carried 
their  god  and  his  symbols ;  but  the  symbol  here  used,  the  two 
tables  containing  the  ten  words,  constantly  pointed  away  from 
images  of  God  in  the  form  of  man  or  of  some  beast  toward 
God  as  law,  and  His  service  as  obedience  to  that  law. 

It  should  be  remembered,  by  the  way,  that  ritual  codes  are 
not  in  antiquity  separated  from  what  we  call  moral,  civil,  and 
social  laws.  So  in  the  Pentateuch  we  have  ritual,  moral,  and 
social  laws  combined  in  one  whole,  ascribed  to  God  as  the 
inspirer  and  Moses  as  the  inspired  author.  He  is  the  inspired 
author  in  the  sense  which  I  have  pointed  out ;  but  when  you 
ask  in  detail  what  was  the  ritual  practice  of  Moses,  what  rites 
can  we  trace  back  to  him,  what  laws  and  what  institutions  can 
we  ascribe  to  him,  you  ask  a  question  that  probably  never  can 
be  answered.  He  bound  a  quantity  of  families  and  tribes 
together  into  a  loose  form  of  national  life  by  a  certain  bond  of 
brotherhood ;  he  took  their  ancient  rites,  usages,  and  laws,  and 
unified  them,  grafted  a  mystical  spirituality  upon  them,  and 
left  them  to  develop  unto  fruitage.  In  studying  the  ritual 
codes  in  Exodus,  Leviticus,  and  Numbers,  we  are  met  every- 
where by  representations  of  the  wilderness.  The  whole 
temple  ritual  is  schemed  out  as  though  originating  in  the 
wilderness.  The  ritual  ordinances  are  presented  in  the  form 
of  a  story  connected  with  the  wandering  in  the  wilderness. 
Very  little  study  is  needed  to  show  anyone  the  impossibility 
of  this  in  a  literal  sense,  but  it  must  not  be  lost  sight  of  that 
this  tradition  is  founded  on  fact.  The  foundations  which 
Moses  laid  were  laid  while  Israel  was  still  a  wanderer.  It  was 
in  the  days  of  their  wandering  that  Moses  established  a 
monotheistic  worship,  with  one  central  symbol  and  one 
central  place  of  worship.  But  one  central  place  of  worship 
was   not   laid   down   as   a   law;    it  was   a  mere   ritual   fact 


ii8    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

arising  out  of  the  conditions  under  which  Israel  existed  in 
that  day. 

Other  practices  which  we  can  probably  trace  back  to  Moses 
would  involve — in  a  settled  community  covering  any  consider- 
able extent  of  country — numerous  places  of  worship ;  for 
instance,  the  order  to  bring  every  beast  that  was  to  be  slain 
for  eating  and  kill  it  before  the  tabernacle.  The  natural 
result  of  this  was  that  when  Israel  became  a  settled  com- 
munity, sacrifices  were  offered  at  many  shrines.  Israel  sought 
to  be  close  to  its  God,  and  the  pious  Hebrews  brought  their 
animals  and  slew  them  before  the  shrine  of  their  own  neigh- 
bourhood in  accordance  with  the  provisions  of  the  ancient 
law  of  the  wilderness.  At  a  later  date,  when  stress  was  laid 
on  the  other  idea  of  having  one  sanctuary,  it  was  necessary  to 
modify  this  law,  or  rather  to  substitute  for  it  a  new  law,  in 
accordance  with  which  it  was  permitted  to  kill  animals  to  eat 
anywhere,  and  the  people  were  told  that  they  might  eat  them 
without  offering  any  part  unto  God.  The  very  conflict  which 
we  find  in  the  history  of  Israel  is  in  itself  an  evidence  of  the 
Mosaic  origin  of  the  two  institutions,  or  rather  that  Moses 
laid  down  certain  principles  which  in  the  conditions  of  the 
wilderness  naturally  involved  both  institutions,  and  that  in 
the  period  after  the  wilderness,  the  people  following  the 
external  side  of  the  law  rather  than  its  spirit,  the  conflict 
ensued  which  we  have  seen.  Again,  Moses  established  the 
principle  of  monotheism,  but  he  did  not  lay  the  stress  upon 
one  special  name  for  God  which  should  be  a  peculiar  mark  of 
Israel.  This  left  the  way  open  to  polytheism  at  a  later  date, 
-through  the  use  of  many  names  for  God;  but  on  the  other 
hand,  prepared  the  way  for  the  foundation  of  a  universal,  as 
over  against  a  national  and  local  religion.  We  must  also 
attribute  the  foundation  of  the  Hebrew  priesthood  to  Moses. 
Aaron  was  an  historical  character,  and  his  priestly  functions  as 
a  contemporary  of  Moses  are  historical ;  but  the  later  attribu- 
tion of  Aaronic  descent  to  all  the  priests  cannot  be  accepted 
literally,  and  the  Bible  itself  is  the  best  evidence  that  it  is  not 
to   be  accepted   literally.     Priests   are  in  all  nations  a  pre- 


THE  RELIGIOUS  EVOLUTION   OF  ISRAEL       119 

historic  institution,  for  the  office  of  priest  is  the  necessary 
outcome  of  the  attempt  to  provide  media  of  communication 
with  spiritual  agencies,  which  attempt,  as  we  have  seen,  began 
before  the  dawn  of  history.  But  a  priesthood  once  established 
tends  to  become  a  caste ;  the  office  becomes  hereditary,  and 
little  by  little  the  priesthood  assumes  to  itself  ever  new  powers. 
This,  which  is  the  common  history  of  the  priesthood  in  all 
religions,  is  the  history  of  the  priesthood  in  Israel  also. 

One  of  the  most  perplexing  points  in  the  study  of  the 
Hebrew  priesthood  is  the  origin  and  position  of  the  tribe 
of  Levi.  The  word  Levi  apparently  means  "bound,"  or 
"attached  to."  There  is,  however,  much  uncertainty  as  to 
the  true  explanation  of  the  term.  Some  have  supposed  that 
it  means  bound,  or  attached  to  the  sanctuary,  and  that  Levi 
was  not  properly  a  tribe,  but  merely  a  designation  for  those 
who  were  bound,  or  attached  to  the  sanctuary.  There  are 
apparently  contradictions  in  the  Bible  narrative.  In  Genesis 
xlix.  Levi  is  mentioned  as  a  tribe,  but  in  other  passages 
we  hear  of  Levites  from  the  tribe  of  Judah  and  from 
Ephraim.  From  the  earhest  times  special  sanctity  was  attri- 
buted to  Levites,  although  members  of  other  tribes  could 
officiate  as  priests,  as  we  see  from  the  story  of  Micah 
(Judges  xvii.).  In  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy  all  priests  are 
designated  as  Levites  and  all  Levites  as  priests.  After  the 
Exile  we  find  priests  and  Levites  distinguished  the  one  from 
the  other.  In  the  post-Exilic  period  Levites  are  confused 
with  Nethinim,  "those  who  were  given,"  that  is,  slaves,  or 
descendants  of  the  slaves  of  the  sanctuary.  This  confusion 
suggests  to  us  that  what  happened  at  this  time  might  have 
happened  before,  and  that  the  tribe  of  Levi  in  the  bulk  may 
very  well  have  been  descended  from  those  who  had  been 
in  one  way  or  another  given  to  the  service  of  the  sanctuary. 
It  ought  to  be  added  that  in  the  period  immediately  succeed- 
ing the  Exile  the  distinction  between  Levites  and  Nethinim  is 
carefully  observed.  At  that  period  also  we  find  temple  singers 
constituting  guilds,  apparently  outside  of  the  Levites.  At 
a  later  date   all   distinction  is  lost ;   the  Nethinim  and  the 


I20   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

various   guilds    of   singers    and   porters  are   merged   in   the 
Levites. 

In  the  early  times  of  all  peoples  the  priesthood  is  important, 
not  only  on  its  ritual  side,  but  also  in  social  and  civil  life. 
The  priests  are  the  depositaries  and  interpreters  of  traditions, 
customs,  rites,  etc.  In  all  early  codes,  in  all  countries,  the 
appeal  for  decision  is  to  God.  If  there  is  no  precedent  which 
determines  in  a  given  case  what  shall  be  done,  then  God  must 
be  appealed  to  to  establish  one.  If  there  be  a  question  of 
veracity  between  two  persons,  God  must  be  appealed  to  to 
decide.  What  we  find  among  all  other  nations  we  find  also 
among  the  Hebrews.  In  the  early  Hebrew  codes  questions 
not  capable  of  other  decision  are  referred  to  God.  The  word 
God  is  used  in  the  Book  of  the  Covenant  (Exod.  xxi.-xxiii.) 
in  a  sense  which  we  are  practically  compelled  to  translate 
as  "judge";  but  God  was  a  judge  through  the  medium  of  the 
priest,  and  the  shrine  at  which  the  priest  officiated  was  the 
court  of  justice.  Out  of  the  fact  that  the  appeal  was  made 
to  God  through  the  priest  the  priest  became  the  law-maker. 
First  he  interpreted  God  to  man  in  his  decisions,  then  he 
became  the  depositary  of  tradition  and  custom  and  of  the 
decisions  of  the  past,  and  then  he  became  the  codifier  of  these 
customs  and  traditions  in  the  form  of  laws.  And  because 
priests  were  what  I  have  described,  they  became  also  the 
conservers  of  knowledge  to  the  people,  the  writers  and 
recorders  of  the  nation. 

In  the  earliest  times  the  priest  was  not  especially  the 
sacrificer;  his  function  was  to  act  as  the  regular  interpreter 
of  God.  Ritual  functions  were,  however,  increasingly  as- 
sumed by  the  priests  as  time  went  on.  In  early  times 
among  the  Hebrews,  as  among  practically  all  nations,  any 
man  could  sacrifice.  It  was  the  function  of  the  head  of  the 
family,  of  the  chief  of  the  tribe,  of  the  king  of  the  nation.  So 
we  find  Gideon  and  Manoah  sacrificing  in  the  Book  of  Judges, 
Saul  officiating  as  chief  priest  when  his  men  sacrificed  for  eating 
after  the  slaughter  of  the  Philistines,  David  sacrificing  as  the 
head  of  the  nation,  Elijah,  the  prophet,   sacrificing   for  the 


THE  RELIGIOUS  EVOLUTION   OF   ISRAEL       121 

people,  Uzziah,  the  king,  sacrificing  in  the  Temple  at  Jerusalem. 
There  is  also  in  the  usage  of  the  Passover  an  interesting  and 
instructive  survival  of  the  custom  by  which  the  head  of  the 
household  was  the  sacrificer  for  the  household.  We  find  the  same 
thing  in  Moslem  sacrifices.  In  course  of  time,  as  the  priests 
assumed  ritual  functions,  the  right  of  sacrifice  was  limited 
among  the  Hebrews,  as  elsewhere.  We  find  traces  of  this 
progress  in  the  historical  books,  where  the  original  facts 
and  later  stories  of  the  theologians  are  sometimes  curiously 
combined,  as  in  the  case  of  Samuel's  rebuke  of  Saul  (i  Sam. 
xiii.  9  ff.),  which  everyone  who  has  read  the  passage  must 
have  felt  to  be  peculiarly  illogical  and  unjust  under  the 
circumstances  described,  although  it  becomes  perfectly  clear 
when  we  analyse  the  document  critically.  On  the  same  plane 
stands  the  story  of  Dathan  and  Abiram,  in  Numbers  xvi. 
With  this,  in  the  form  in  which  we  have  it,  has  been  combined 
the  story  of  Korah,  in  which  we  have  pictured  the  struggle 
between  the  priests  and  the  Levites.  But  the  best  known 
of  all  the  notices  in  the  Bible,  and  that  which  is  put  at 
the  latest  date,  is  the  story  of  Uzziah,  who  was  smitten  with 
leprosy  for  executing  the  office  of  a  priest  in  the  Temple 
(2  Chron.  xxvi.  21-23).  The  most  naive  picture  of  all  the 
accounts  of  assumption  of  power  on  the  part  of  the  priest 
which  we  find  is  that  contained  in  the  account  of  the  priests 
of  Shiloh,  in  i  Samuel  ii.  This  story,  in  the  form  in  which  we 
have  it,  is  in  itself  very  early.  Here  we  are  told  that  in 
the  older  time  it  had  been  the  custom  when  a  man  sacrificed, 
after  the  blood  had  been  poured  out  and  perhaps  some 
portion  of  the  sacrifice  had  been  actually  burned  by  fire 
to  God,  for  him  to  cut  up  the  animal  and  put  it  in  the  pot 
to  cook,  in  order  that  he  and  his  family  or  friends  might  feast 
upon  it  before  God.  While  it  was  still  in  the  pot,  the  priest  or 
his  servant  would  come  and  thrust  a  fork  into  the  pot,  and 
whatever  was  secured  by  that  thrust  became  the  property  of 
the  priest.  It  is  a  cause  of  bitter  complaint  that  the  sons 
of  Eli  are  violating  this  ancient  and  immemorial  practice,  and 
insisting  upon  taking  a  definite  and  probably  larger  portion 


122    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

of  the  animal  sacrificed  before  it  had  been  put  in  the  pot 
at  all. 

The  variety  of  places  of  worship  among  the  Hebrews  was  a 
necessary  result  of  the  application  of  the  ritual  practices  of  the 
nomadic  period  to  the  changed  conditions  of  the  settled  life 
in  Palestine  and  the  more  extended  territory  which  was  occu- 
pied ;  so  that,  for  example,  in  Leviticus  xvii.,  which  I  regard 
as  containing  in  principle  legislation  of  the  earliest  stratum,  it 
is  forbidden  to  kill  any  creature  to  eat,  except  before  the 
sanctuary,  for  all  eating  is  sacrifice,  and  every  creature  which 
is  slain  must  be  slain  before  God.  To  carry  out  this  principle 
when  the  camp  had  turned  into  a  nation  occupying  a  large 
territory  involved  the  establishment  of  innumerable  sanctuaries, 
and  we  find  the  Jews  throughout  the  historical  period  until  the 
time  of  Josiah  worshipping  and  sacrificing  at  innumerable 
sanctuaries. 

The  necessary  result  of  the  establishment  of  the  kingdom 
was  a  tendency  toward  the  centralisation  of  worship.  The 
great  number  of  small  shrines,  acting  as  so  many  rival  local 
centres,  tended  on  the  whole  to  disintegrate  the  nation.  If 
the  nation  was  to  be  centralised  under  one  individual,  its 
worship  must  be  centered  also,  either  in  his  person  or  under 
his  control,  at  the  place  of  his  residence.  David,  according  to 
the  account  given  in  the  books  of  Samuel,  was  head  of  the 
Jewish  Church  in  a  far  more  absolute  sense  than  to-day  the 
Czar  of  Russia  is  the  head  of  the  Russian  Church,  or  the  Sultan 
the  head  of  Islam.  David  himself  was  a  sacrificer,  and  not 
only  did  he  sacrifice  as  head  of  his  family  and  head  of  the 
nation,  but  he  appointed  his  sons  priests  (2  Sam.  viii.  18),  just 
as  in  the  Book  of  Judges  we  are  told  that  Micah  appointed  his 
son  a  priest  (Judges  xvii.  5).  Both  for  the  purpose  of  restoring 
that  which  was  ancient  and  holy  in  Israel,  and  also  for  the 
purpose  of  obtaining  special  sanctity  for  the  sacred  place  that 
was  near  his  person,  David  restored  the  Ark  which  had  for 
many  years  been  resting  in  desuetude  and  oblivion.  Two 
chief  priests  are  mentioned  in  the  history  of  David  as  officiat- 
ing at  the  same  time,  Abiathar  and  Zadok.     In  reading  the 


THE  RELIGIOUS  EVOLUTION  OF  ISRAEL       123 

account  in  the  books  of  Samuel  of  the  activities  of  Abiathar 
it  will  be  observed  that  there  is  little  or  nothing  about  sacrifice, 
but  very  much  about  the  casting  of  the  lots.     At  the  time  of 
David  the  primitive  conception  of  the  priest  still  prevailed ;  his 
special  function  was  not  to  sacrifice,  but  to  interpret  the  oracles 
of  God  and  cast  the  sacred  lots.     A  survival  of  this  ancient 
function  of  the  priesthood  is  found  in  the  Urim  and  Thummim, 
which  are  special  marks  of  the  high  priest  in  the  later  periods 
of  Judaism.     After  the  casting  of  the  lots  had  ceased  to  be  his 
special  work,  the  lots  themselves  remained  as  a  sort  of  insignia 
of  office,  indicating  what  the  origin  of  the  priest  had  been. 
But  David  had  in  his  immediate   surroundings  not  merely 
priests,  but  also  prophets,  and  in  this  regard  he  differed  in  no 
respect  from  kings  of  the  surrounding  nations,  Phoenicians,  and 
Syrians.     Among  these  peoples  also  you  find  both  priests  and 
soothsayers,  and  this  duplicity  of  the  interpretation  of  God  to 
men  has  survived  in  the  Orient  until  this  day,  so  that  in  Islam 
you  find  the  division  into  the  Ulema,  the  representatives  of  the 
priesthood  of  earlier  times  and  other  peoples,  and  the  Der- 
vishes, who  are  the  soothsayers  and  prophets.     As  between 
priest  and  prophet  we  might  define  the  former  as  the  regular, 
the  latter  as   the   extraordinary  medium   of  communication 
between  God  and  man. 

Solomon  carried  the  centralisation  of  worship  much  further 
th?n  his  father,  and  the  erection  of  his  great  Temple  at  Jerusa- 
lem marks  a  most  important  step  in  the  development  of  the 
religion  of  Israel.     That  Temple  had  the  most  far-reaching 
results  in  relation  not  merely  to  the  ritual,  but  also  to  more 
fundamental  parts  of  the  religion.     The  Temple  itself,  in  its 
architecture  and  symbolism,  may  be  called  identical  with  the 
temples  of  the  nations  round  about.     The  Hittite  temple  de- 
scribed in  one  of  the  inscriptions  of  Sargon  of  Assyria,  and  the 
famous  Hittite-Syrian  temple  at  HierapoUs,  near  Carchemish, 
so  far  as  we  can  judge,  were  of  the  same  general  character  as 
the  Temple  of  Solomon.   What  little  we  know  about  Phoenician 
temples  shows  the  most  striking  analogies  between  them  and 
the  Temple  of  Solomon,  and  the  excavation  of  ancient  Baby- 


124   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Ionian  temples  shows  us,  as  already  pointed  out,  the  same 
^1  fundamental  principles  in  use  in  Babylonia  and  at  Jerusalem. 
The  Holy  of  Holies,  the  succession  of  courts  one  above  the 
other,  leading  up  ultimately  to  the  mysterious  inner  place 
where  the  invisible  God  dwelt  in  darkness,  the  form  and  place 
of  the  altar,  the  strange  columns  before  the  Temple,  called  by 
the  Jews  Jachin  and  Boaz — all  these  are  features  common  to 
the  Jewish  Temple,  with  the  temples  of  Phoenicia,  Syria,  Assyria, 
and  Babylonia. 

The  Temple  of  Solomon  was  a  great  cathedral  for  the  worship 
of  the  Jews,  and  very  much  like  the  Roman  Catholic  cathedral 
of  the  present  day,  which,  besides  its  high  altar,  has  innumer- 
able side-altars  dedicated  to  its  various  saints  and  especially  to 
the  Virgin;  and  like  the  great  temples  of  Babylon,  which, 
besides  the  central  Holy  of  Holies  dedicated  to  the  great  god 
of  the  country,  had  innumerable  other  shrines  consecrated  to 
various  other  divinities,  prominent  among  which  was  always 
the  female  half  of  the  great  god,  the  Beltis  of  the  Bel — so 
until  the  time  of  Josiah  the  temple  of  Yahaweh  at  Jerusalem 
was  a  sort  of  pantheon  where  the  shrines  of  numerous  other 
divinities,  but  especially  of  Ashtaroth,  were  grouped  about  the 
Holy  of  Holies  dedicated  to  Yahaweh.  The  high  priest  of 
the  Yahaweh  shrine  of  this  great  cathedral  of  Solomon  was 
Zadok,  and  in  his  family  the  priesthood  of  Yahaweh  became 
hereditary,  and  was  ultimately  limited  to  that  family  only. 

The  great  national  schism  under  Solomon's  son  found  itself 
confronted,  when  it  would  have  restored  the  ancient  condition 
of  things — for  this  was  really  the  object  of  the  rebels — with  the 
religious  influence  of  this  Temple ;  and  the  new  kingdom,  in 
order  to  counteract  that  influence,  was  forced  itself  to  establish 
cathedrals  of  a  similar  nature,  to  the  detriment  of  the  local 
shrines  which  were  the  representatives  of  the  ancient  religion, 
in  the  popular  view  at  least.  In  the  northern  kingdom  two 
cathedrals  were  established  instead  of  one :  the  one  at  the 
ancient  prehistoric  shrine  of  Bethel,  which  was  a  place 
rendered  peculiarly  sacred  to  the  Israelites  through  the  stories 
of  the  patriarchs,  and  the  other  at  Dan,  one  of  those  natural 


THE  RELIGIOUS  EVOLUTION   OF   ISRAEL       125 

centres  of  worship  the  sanctity  of  which  continued  unimpaired 
through  the  periods  of  many  beUefs,  because  at  that  point  the 
great  springs  of  the  Jordan  gush  out  from  the  under  world. 
The  priesthood  of  the  northern  kingdom  was  apparently  a 
restoration  of  somewhat  more  primitive  times.  They  do  not 
appear  in  the  northern  kingdom  to  have  recognised  the 
Levitical  right  to  the  same  extent  to  which  it  was  recognised 
in  the  south,  but  to  have  permitted  persons  of  other  tribes 
to  officiate  as  well  as  Levites. 

The  priesthood  of  the  Yahaweh  Temple  at  Jerusalem  was 
Aaronic.  We  are  told  incidentally  that  the  priests  of  the 
cathedral  at  Dan  were  descended  from  Moses.  If  I  under- 
stand the  history  of  the  north,  the  name  Yahaweh  did  not 
receive  the  emphasis  there  which  was  given  to  it  in  the  south. 
If  the  name  was,  in  the  earlier  days  of  the  northern  kingdom, 
used  at  all,  it  apparently  took  a  secondary  place,  the  special 
name  for  God  which  was  used  being  the  broader  and  more 
generic  title  El. 

At  the  time  of  Ahab,  who  made  alliances  of  a  very  inti- 
mate nature  with  the  Phoenicians  in  order  to  strengthen  him 
in  his  contest  with  Damascus,  Phoenician  worship  as  such 
was  introduced.  It  was  in  so  many  of  its  outward  forms 
and  names  similar  to  the  worship  of  Israel,  that  it  may  have 
seemed  to  Ahab  as  though  it  would  be  merely  an  adoption 
of  something  more  complete  and  higher  to  substitute  this 
worship  for  that  of  his  own  people.  Jezebel,  his  wife,  was, 
as  we  are  led  to  suppose,  an  almost  fanatical  adherent  of 
the  national  worship  of  her  city.  Her  name  itself  means 
"woman  of  Bel,"  a  name  which  has  been  handed  down 
to  us  from  the  Phoenicians  through  the  Spaniards  in  the 
form  of  Isabella.  We  see  in  other  particulars  the  great  in- 
fluence which  Jezebel  exerted  over  her  husband  and  over 
the  court  at  large.  It  was  the  endeavour  to  substitute  this 
apparently  similar  Phoenician  cult  for  the  native  religion  which 
brought  about  the  fight  against  Baal  headed  by  the  prophet 
Elijah.  His  name  (God  is  Yah)  indicates  the  basis  of  the 
conflict.     It  is  necessary  that  one  characteristic  Hebrew  name 


> 


126   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

shall  be  taken  for  God,  and  he  takes  that  name  which  has 
prevailed  in  the  south  and  which  is  identified  with  the  Temple 
at  Jerusalem.  His  mission  is  to  declare  that  God  is  Yah — or 
Yahaweh,  as  it  appears  in  the  full  form.  His  mission  was 
successful ;  and  the  Jehu  dynasty,  which  was  established  in 
place  of  that  of  Ahab,  is  the  Yahaweh  dynasty.  Jehu,  as 
written  in  our  Bible,  is  nothing  but  the  word  Yahaweh.  It 
will  be  observed  also  that  whereas  until  the  time  of  Elijah  we 
find  in  northern  Israel  no  proper  names  containing  the  name 
Yah  in  composition,  from  that  time  on  it  begins  to  be  as  regu- 
lar a  component  part  of  royal  names  as  it  had  been  in  the 
southern  kingdom  since  the  days  of  David. 

Athaliah,  the  daughter  of  Jezebel,  becoming  queen  at 
Jerusalem  during  the  minority  of  her  son,  usurped  the  throne 
for  herself,  and  undertook  to  introduce  Baal  worship  into 
Jerusalem  also.  The  defeat  of  her  project  was  due  to  the 
activity  of  the  priests  of  the  Temple  of  Yahaweh  at  Jerusalem  ; 
and  the  fact  that  these  priests  succeeded  in  preserving  the 
Davidic  dynasty  from  destruction  and  re-establishing  it 
upon  the  throne,  as  well  as  the  fact  that  they  embodied 
national  and  popular  sentiment  in  battling  against  Athaliah 
for  the  preservation  of  the  cult  of  Yahaweh,  naturally  greatly 
increased  their  power. 

The  fall  of  Samaria  is  an  event  the  literary  and  historical 
significance  of  which  has  generally  been  underestimated.  Up 
to  that  time  culture  and  civilisation  had  had  their  home  in  the 
north.  The  relative  positions  of  Samaria  and  Judah  were 
somewhat  the  same  as  those  of  Constantinople  and  Rome 
during  the  Middle  Ages.  The  theologians  of  the  West  to-day 
claim  that  Rome  represents  the  direct  ecclesiastical  line,  the 
true  Church,  the  true  priesthood,  whereas  Constantinople 
represented  a  secondary  development,  and  was  guilty  of  heresy 
and  schism.  This  is  precisely  the  view  which  the  writer  of 
Chronicles  takes  with  regard  to  the  Church  of  Judah  and  the 
Church  of  Israel.  But  if  in  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries 
the  true  Church  and  the  genuine  deposit  of  religion  were 
at  Rome,   even  the   Roman  Cathohc  historians  must  allow 


THE  RELIGIOUS  EVOLUTION   OF  ISRAEL       127 

that  culture  and  civilisation  were  at  Constantinople.  It  was 
the  fall  of  Constantinople  which  drove  this  culture  from  the 
Eastern  empire  to  the  Western,  brought  about  the  Renaissance, 
and  did  its  part,  and  that  a  great  part,  in  effecting  the  religious 
reformation  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Similarly  the  fall  of 
Samaria  resulted  in  sending  the  scholars  and  the  literature 
and  the  civiHsation  of  Samaria  to  Jerusalem,  producing  there 
the  Renaissance  of  the  time  of  Hezekiah,  and  preparing  the 
way  for  the  great  religious  reformation  of  the  succeeding 
century  under  King  Josiah.  Hezekiah  undertook  to  estabhsh 
a  library  in  Jerusalem  (Prov.  xxv.  i),  and  it  is  to  this  library 
presumably  that  we  owe  the  preservation  of  so  much  of  the 
literature  of  northern  Israel,  which  is  now  embodied  in  our 
Bible.  It  was  under  Hezekiah  that  the  prophets  of  Jerusalem 
first  began  to  write  and  we  encounter  the  written  as  over 
against  the  spoken  prophecies.  Presumably  at  the  same  time 
the  earlier  codifications  of  ritual  and  social  laws  began  to 
assume  a  written  form.  There  was  discovered  not  long  since 
at  a  temple  in  Crete  a  tablet  containing  directions  for  the 
sacrificers  and  worshippers  at  the  temple.  We  were  already 
familiar  with  the  Phoenician  tablet  of  Marseilles,  containing 
a  sort  of  tariff  for  the  worshippers.  I  think  we  may  fairly 
assume  that  long  before  the  period  of  Hezekiah  similar  tablets 
and  directions  had  been  in  existence  for  the  convenience  of  the 
sacrificers  and  the  benefit  of  the  priests  at  Jerusalem.  So, 
for  example,  the  sacrificial  provisions  contained  in  the  first 
chapters  of  Leviticus,  which  are  of  very  ancient  date,  may 
well  be  supposed  to  have  been  handed  down  from  an  early 
period  inscribed  upon  such  tablets.  But  in  the  time  of 
Hezekiah,  I  suppose,  the  codification  of  the  laws  and  ritual 
and  also  of  traditions  and  customs  progressed  much  farther, 
under  the  stimulus  of  the  literary  atmosphere  which  then 
began  to  prevail. 

I  have  already  pointed  out  that  this  Renaissance  led  to  a 
reform  in  the  following  century ;  indeed,  the  religious  reforma- 
tion had  begun  already  at  the  time  of  Hezekiah,  but  was 
not  completed  and  did  not  take  its  ultimate  shape  until  the 


128    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

succeeding  century.  At  the  time  of  Hezekiah,  and  still  also 
at  the  time  of  Josiah,  the  Temple  was,  as  has  been  said 
before,  a  Pantheon.  A  brazen  serpent  was  worshipped  there, 
the  worship  of  which  was  justified  by  the  story  that  during 
the  wanderings  in  the  wilderness  it  had  been  put  up  upon 
a  pole  at  a  time  when  poisonous  serpents  invaded  the  camp, 
and  whosoever  looked  upon  it  had  been  healed.  This  is 
generally  regarded  by  students  of  religions  as  a  relic  of  totem 
worship.  The  Asherah  was  the  symbol  of  a  very  foul  cult, 
but  that  also,  with  all  its  disgusting  surroundings  and  its 
lust,  licensed  under  the  name  of  religion,  was  housed  in  the 
courts  of  the  Temple  of  Yahaweh  at  the  time  of  Hezekiah. 
The  religious  reformation  drove  out  all  such  impure  worship 
and  all  foreign  worship. 

We  find  the  prophet  Isaiah  denouncing  mere  ritual;  we  find 
him  also  a  friend  of  and  fellow-worker  with  the  chief  priest 
01  the  Temple  of  Yahaweh  at  Jerusalem.  Isaiah's  call  to 
prophecy,  according  to  his  own  account,  was  based  on  the 
ritual  of  the  Temple.  He  receives  the  call  through  the  form 
and  in  the  language  of  that  ritual  as  he  is  worshipping  there. 
The  sacred  and  mysterious  Holy  of  Holies  lies  open  before 
his  eyes,  and  you  see  that  in  his  thought  God  is  localised 
there.  That  is  the  particular  holy  place  through  which  he 
is  able  to  conceive  of  the  mystery,  and  the  glory,  and  the 
holiness  of  God.  Even  that  holiness  doctrine  which  is  so 
marked  a  characteristic  of  Isaiah  is  taken  from  the  technical 
phraseology  of  the  Jewish  ritual.  If  the  whole  priesthood 
of  the  Temple  was  not  awake  to  the  spiritual  meanings  lying 
behind  the  ritual,  at  least  the  chief  priest  seems  to  have  been, 
and  a  man  so  spiritually  minded  as  Isaiah  was  able  to  find  his 
religious  home  and  his  spiritual  inspiration  in  the  Temple  of 
Jehovah.  This  being  the  case,  we  can  see  how  it  was  that 
the  reformation,  which  aimed  at  overthrowing  the  shrines  of  the 
false  gods  which  were  to  be  found  in  the  Temple,  originated 
with  and  was  carried  through  chiefly  by  means  of  the  priests  of 
that  Temple  working  in  harmony  with  the  prophets. 

It    is   worth   while   to   notice   that    the    deliverance    from 


THE   RELIGIOUS   EVOLUTION   OF   ISRAEL      129 

Sennacherib  in  this  reign,  connected  as  it  was  with  the  pro- 
phecies of  Isaiah,  played  a  most  important  part  in  directing 
and  formulating  the  Messianic  hope.  In  fact,  the  Messianic 
and  prophetic  interpretation  of  that  deUverance  became  the 
cause  of  the  downfall  of  good  King  Josiah  in  the  following 
century.  For,  having  this  mighty  deliverance  before  his  eyes, 
due  to  the  goodness  and  the  reforms  of  Hezekiah,  he  supposed-^ 
that  he  also,  because  of  his  reforms  and  because  he  had  kept 
the  Law  of  Yahaweh,  would  be  given  victory  over  superior 
numbers;  and  relying  on  this  faith,  he  ventured  to  oppose 
the  overwhelming  superior  forces  of  the  King  of  Egypt,  and 
perished  in  the  attempt. 

Following  Hezekiah  came  a  period  of  reaction  under  Amon 
and  Manasseh,  and  the  introduction  of  various  heathen  cults, 
no  longer  apparently  under  the  claim  that  they  were  national,' 
but  distinctly  as  foreign.     The  introduction  of  foreign  cults 
of  this  nature  naturally  involved  the  interests  of  the  priests 
even    more    than   those   of    the  prophets.      The    priests    of 
Yahaweh's  Temple  were  directly  assailed  by  such  attempts 
to  establish  other  cults.     It  was  during  the  reign  of  Josiah 
that  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy  was  found  in  the  Temple— that 
book  which  claimed  that  the  Temple  of  Yahaweh  at  Jerusalem 
was  the  only  legitimate  place  of  worship  for  Israelites,  which 
laid  down  the  law  of  unity  of  worship  and  prescribed  this 
place  as  the  God-ordained  centre  of  the  national  religion.     It 
will  be  observed  that  this  was  a  revival  of  the  ancient  practice 
of  the  prehistoric,  nomadic  period  of  Israel's  Hfe,  of  sacri- 
ficing at  one  place,  the  one  central  shrine  of  the  camp  of  the 
wandering  Israelites ;  and  I  have  already  pointed  out  that  the 
study  of  the  religious  development  of  Israel  seems  to  make 
it  clear  that  unity  of  worship  in  this  form  originated  with 
Moses  as  a  ritual  fact  during  the  period  when  he  was  uniting 
the  wandering  tribes  of  Israel  into  one  loose  band  of  brothers. 
This  ritual  fact  now  assumes  a  new  meaning;  it  becomes  a 
ritual  necessity  if  the  worship  of  one  God  is  to  be  preserved; 
and  Deuteronomy  is  an  attempt  to  call  back  the  people  by 
the   prescription    of    one   central   place    of   worship   to    the 


I30   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

primitive  Mosaic  practice  in  this  respect.  Deuteronomy  was 
properly  and  legitimately  put  forward  as  the  Law  of  Moses. 
Tne  reforms  of  Josiah  which  ensued  upon  the  publication 
of  Deuteronomy  resulted  in  the  permanent  overthrow  of  all 
shrines  to  other  gods  and  all  the  high  places  at  which 
Yahaweh  was  worshipped,  and  in  the  centralisation  of  worship 
absolutely  at  the  Temple  of  Yahaweh  in  Jerusalem.  From 
this  Temple  also  was  banished  every  other  shrine,  the  worship 
of  Yahaweh  alone  being  allowed  there ;  and  the  ritual  of  the 
priesthood  of  the  Temple  of  Yahaweh  at  Jerusalem  was  made 
the  ritual  of  the  nation.  An  attempt  of  a  statesmanlike 
description  was  made  to  provide  for  the  priests  of  Yahaweh 
who  had  been  officiating  at  the  various  high  places  throughout 
the  land.  According  to  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy,  they  were 
to  be  given  places  in  the  Temple  at  Jerusalem  and  put  on  an 
equality,  upon  complying  with  certain  easy  conditions,  with 
the  Aaronic  priests  of  the  Jerusalem  Temple.  It  will  be 
noticed  that  Jeremiah  the  prophet,  himself  of  priestly  origin, 
and  the  chief  priest  worked  together  in  this  reform.  The 
opposition  of  the  Aaronic  priesthood  of  the  Jerusalem  Temple 
to  the  admission  of  the  Levitical  priests  of  the  high  places  to 
equal  privileges  with  themselves  was,  however,  too  strong  to 
be  overcome ;  and  we  shall  see  that  in  the  succeeding  century 
those  Levitical  priests  who  formerly  officiated  at  the  high 
places  are  relegated  to  a  lower  position,  becoming  Levites,  as 
we  generally  understand  that  term. 

Jeremiah's  younger  contemporary,  Ezekiel,  was  also  priest 
and  prophet.  From  the  reference  which  Jeremiah  makes  to 
the  prophets  at  this  period  we  are  inclined  to  think  that  as 
a  body  their  influence  was  not  altogether  for  good.  In  the 
Exile  prophets  were  burned  by  Nebuchadrezzar  in  the  fire 
as  those  who  were  exciting  the  exiles  to  revolt.  Compare 
also  in  Zechariah  (xiii.  3  ff.)  the  reference  to  the  bad 
repute  of  prophets  at  that  time.  It  is  fair  to  suppose  that 
the  conservatism  of  the  priesthood  needed  to  be  combined 
with  the  radicalism  of  the  prophetic  spirit  in  order  to  produce 
prophets  of  the  better  type.     At  all  events,  both  Jeremiah 


THE   RELIGIOUS   EVOLUTION    OF    ISRAEL      131 

and  Ezekiel  were  at  once  priest  and  prophet.  We  have  seen 
that  Isaiah  depended  upon  the  ritual  for  the  outward  form 
of  his  inspiration.  There  is  little  or  none  of  this  in  Jeremiah, 
but  he,  on  the  other  hand,  lays  great  stress  on  the  Law. 
Ezekiel,  however,  is  dependent  for  his  symbolism  and  for 
his  thought  upon  Jewish  ritual  to  an  extent  many  times  ex- 
ceeding the  dependence  of  Isaiah.  The  symboHsm  of  the 
Holy  of  Holies  and  the  cherubim  is  the  medium  through 
which  he  receives  his  vision  and  his  call  to  prophecy.  But 
he  also  makes  great  use  of  the  Law.  His  Utopia,  as  described 
in  the  last  eleven  chapters  of  his  book,  is  an  ideal  Garden^ 
of  Eden.  He  takes  the  story  of  the  Garden  of  Eden,  but 
makes  his  Eden  on  the  pattern  of  priestly  legislation  and 
priestly  ritual.  Jerusalem  is  the  centre  of  the  universe,  the 
Holy  Land  is  the  new  Eden.  There  has  been  much  con- 
troversy as  to  the  relation  of  Ezekiel's  Utopia  to  the  priestly 
legislation  of  the  middle  books  of  the  Pentateuch,  and  it 
has  been  argued  that  that  legislation  was  dependent  upon 
Ezekiel's  idea,  and  not  his  ideas  dependent  upon  earlier 
legislation  and  practice.  It  seems  to  me  that  Ezekiel  the 
priest  did  little  more  than  take  the  theory  of  the  Aaronic 
priests  of  the  Jerusalem  Temple,  and,  with  a  certain  admixture 
of  his  own  personal  fancies,  present  a  picture  of  the  Holy 
Land  administered  upon  that  system.  The  legislation  of  the 
middle  books  seems  to  me,  speaking  roughly,  to  be  a  complete 
codification  of  the  Aaronic  idea  as  held  by  the  priests  of  the 
Jerusalem  Temple,  of  whom  Ezekiel  was  one,  rather  than  a 
development  from  Ezekiel's  Utopia.  The  difference  between 
this  legislation  and  that  of  Deuteronomy  is  largely  due  to 
the  fact  that  Deuteronomy  represented  a  compromise,  the 
attempt  being  made  to  bring  the  Levites  into  an  equality  with 
the  Aaronic  priests,  which  the  latter,  who  regarded  themselves 
as  alone  legitimate,  refused  to  accept.  They  recognised  the 
Levitical  priests  of  the  high  places  as  descendants  of  the  tribe 
of  Levi,  but  had  built  up  a  theory  in  accordance  with  which 
the  Levites  in  general  were  distinguished  from  the  priests  in 
particular ;  those  who  officiated  in  the  Temple  of  Yahaweh  at 


132  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Jerusalem  being,  according  to  this  theory,  the  priests  and  the 
only  priests.  I  suppose  this  theory  received  its  complete 
formulation  as  the  consequence  of  the  struggle  of  which  we 
have  a  record  at  the  time  of  Josiah,  but  I  do  not  suppose 
that  it  was  an  invention  of  Ezekiel;  and  what  is  true  with 
regard  to  this  question  of  the  priesthood  is,  I  think,  true  with 
regard  to  other  matters  of  ritual  in  which  we  find  a  difference 
between  the  earlier  codes  or  the  Deuteronomic  code  and  the 
final  priest  codes  of  the  middle  books. 

During  the  Exile  there  was  probably  some  theoretical  de- 
velopment of  older  principles,  or  rather  a  definite  codification 
and   statement   of  theories   which    had    not    hitherto    found 
definite  expression  in  legislation,  but  on  the  whole  the  period 
of  the  Exile  was  a  period  of  codification  rather  than  creation. 
This  is  very  distinctly  marked  in  the  matter  of  sacrifice.     In 
general  the  animals  which  may  be  sacrificed  are  those  domestic 
animals  which  are  ordinary  articles  of  food.    Now  the  Hebrew 
codes   (compare   Leviticus   i.)   allowed    the   sacrifice    of  the 
bull,  the  sheep,  the  goat,  and  two  varieties  of  doves.     This 
represented  the  entire  extent  of  the  domestic  animals  used 
for  food  at  the  time  when  the  laws  of  sacrifice  took  their 
definite  form.     But  even  in  these  laws  we  can  see  a  develop- 
ment.    The  original  law  mentioned  only  the  bull,  the  sheep, 
and  the  goat.     The  two  varieties   of  doves   are   mentioned 
in   a   sort   of  codicil.     This   codicil   belongs   to   the   period 
when  Israel,  becoming  a  settled  people,  began  to  domesticate 
fowl.     But  why  should  we  not  have  the  cock  mentioned  as  a 
sacrificial  animal?     The  Jews  came  in  contact  with  the  cock 
first  during  the  Captivity.     The  cock  had  not  been  introduced 
to  the  west  before  that  as  a  domestic  fowl ;  he  was  brought 
west  with  the  Persian  conquest.     The  Jews  of  to-day  sacrifice 
the  cock,  and  apparently  this  practice  began  with  the  period 
of  the  Exile ;  but  the  law  of  sacrifice  was  at  the  time  of  the 
Exile  already  so  definitely  completed  that,  although  in  popular 
practice  the  sacrifice  was  introduced,  legally  and  officially  no 
attention  was  paid  to  it,  and  there  is  no  mention  of  it  in 
the  codes. 


THE   RELIGIOUS   EVOLUTION   OF    ISRAEL      133 

The  priest  code  as  such  originated  in  the  Jerusalem  Temple. 
During  and  after  the  Exile  the  code  of  the  Temple,  popular 
traditions,  and  various  other  laws  which  had  been  handed 
down  in  various  ways  were  worked  up  and  combined  into  one 
whole,  not  without  Babylonian  influence.  The  collection  of 
this  material  in  one  book  of  itself  led  to  a  certain  amount  of 
development.  It  lacked  completeness.  In  one  place  the 
simple  primitive  statement  was  there,  but  the  necessary  de- 
ductions had  not  been  drawn.  In  another  place  something 
was  wanted  to  harmonise  those  things  which  conflicted.  In 
another  something  was  needed  to  define  certain  points — ex- 
planations possibly  in  the  form  of  a  story  were  needed.  The 
work  of  bringing  together  all  this  material  began  during  the 
Exilic  period,  and  developed  a  scribal  school  among  the  Jews 
of  the  Exile,  the  business  of  which  was  to  codify  and  unify 
tradition  and  law.  Of  creative  action  there  was,  in  my  judg- 
ment, comparatively  little,  and  that  little  of  the  kind  which  I 
have  described  already.  The  priests,  as  a  natural  outcome  of 
their  history,  as  I  have  described  it,  furnished  the  scribes  who 
did  this  work,  and  until  the  time  of  Ezra  the  priest  we  may 
regard  this  as  the  special  line  of  development  of  the  priest- 
hood. The  priests  in  Babylonia  had  become,  through  force  of 
circumstances,  interpreters  of  the  oracles  of  God  once  more 
rather  than  sacrificers.  Prophet  and  priest,  soothsayer  and 
interpreter  of  oracles  had  always  stood  side  by  side  in  the 
history  of  Israel,  as  in  that  of  all  the  surrounding  nations.  I 
have  already  pointed  out  that  from  the  time  of  Isaiah  to  the 
time  of  Ezra  there  was  an  inclination  to  unite  the  two  functions 
in  one  person.  That  unity,  however,  was  by  no  means  com- 
plete, and  we  see  from  what  we  gather  of  the  history  of  this 
period  through  its  literature  that  from  the  time  of  the  Exile 
onward,  if  priest  and  prophet  did  not  diverge  the  one  from  the 
other,  at  least  the  two  streams  did  not  become  one,  but  ran 
parallel  until  both  were  ultimately  merged  in  the  scribal  school 
which  became  dominant  after  the  time  of  Ezra. 

The  priestly  school,  as  represented  in  the  study  and  codifica- 
tion of  the  Law,  became,  after  the  Exile,  distinctly  particularistic. 


134  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Its  object  was  to  hedge  Israel  off  from  the  nations  among 
whom  it  was ;  to  find  what  was  peculiar  to  Israel,  and  to  lay 
the  stress  upon  this.  Some  of  the  prophets  of  this  period,  on 
the  other  hand,  carried  out  to  a  still  further  extent  than  the 
earlier  prophets  had  done  that  universal  conception  of  which 
we  find  so  large  an  element  in  the  prophecies  of  Amos  and 
the  first  Isaiah.  It  is  the  second  Isaiah  who  presents  to  us  in 
this  period  the  picture  of  Israel  suffering  for  the  salvation  of  all 
mankind.  But  the  highest  limit  of  the  universal  conception  is 
reached  in  the  post-Exilic  Book  of  Jonah,  which  is  a  parable  of 
the  love  of  God  towards  the  Gentiles  equally  with  the  Jews. 
With  the  adoption  of  the  law  under  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  the 
particularistic  school  may  be  said  to  have  triumphed,  but 
triumphed  not  at  the  expense  of  prophecy  only,  but  also  of 
the  priesthood.  Gradually,  as  a  result  of  the  dominance  of 
the  scribal  theory,  both  priest  and  prophet  were  merged  in 
the  scribe.  The  Law  took  the  place  of  both  sacrifice  and 
prophecy,  and  the  entire  thought  of  the  nation  was  concen- 
'trated  upon  the  interpretation  of  that  Law  and  its  application 
to  the  life  of  man.  The  sanctification  of  the  ancient  Law  led 
in  its  turn  to  the  sanctification  of  the  ancient  History,  and  the 
writings  of  the  ancient  Prophets,  until  the  first  canon  of  the 
Law  was  supplemented  by  the  second  canon  of  the  Prophets, 
and  that  in  course  of  time  by  the  third  canon,  the  Hagio- 
grapha;  and  these  three  canons  being  established,  the  same 
methods  of  interpretation  and  enlargement  by  interpretation 
were  applied  to  the  Prophets  and  the  Hagiographa  which  had 
been  applied  to  the  Law. 

With  the  time  of  the  Maccabees  there  comes  a  revival  of 
prophecy  in  a  new  form,  looking  to  the  future  only;  for  the 
apocalyptic  literature  which  was  developed  at  that  period,  and 
at  the  head  of  which  stands  the  Book  of  Daniel,  was  a  true 
descendant  of  the  ancient  prophets.  Prophetic  in  its  nature 
also  was  the  Messianic  hope,  which  was  re-created  at  this 
period ;  but  both  the  Messianic  hope  and  the  Book  of  Daniel 
are  discussed  in  later  chapters  of  this  work. 


CHAPTER   VII 

THE   RISE  AND   DEVELOPMENT   OF   THE 
MESSIANIC   HOPE 

IT  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  nowhere  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment is  "Messiah"  the  technical  term  which  it  became 
in  the  post-Maccabaean,  scribal  period  of  Jewish  history.     In 
Leviticus  it  is  applied  to  the  High  Priest;  in  the  historical 
books  to  Saul,  to  David,  to  the  patriarchs ;  in  Lamentations  to 
King  Hezekiah ;   in  Habakkuk  to  the  people  of  Israel  as  a 
whole;  in  the  Psalms  to  kings  of  the  Davidic  dynasty  (and 
perhaps  also  to  Israelitish  kings)  indiscriminately ;  in  Deutero- 
Isaiah  to  Cyrus;  and  in  the  Book  of  Daniel  both  to  Cyrus 
and  to  one  of  the  Seleucids.     This  variety  of  use  of  the  word 
in  the  Old  Testament  corresponds   in  some  degree  to   the 
variety  of  simple  motives  ultimately  combined  in  the  grand, 
many-sided   harmony   of  the   Messianic   hope    realised.      In 
general  the  word  "  Messiah "  of  the  Hebrew  text  has  been 
translated  "anointed"  in  our  Bible,^  but  in  Daniel  ix.  25,  26, 
where  the  word  is  used  once  in  reference  to  Cyrus  and  once 
in  reference  to  a  Seleucid,  the  Hebrew  "Messiah"  is  retained. 
The  Messianic  passages  of  the  Old  Testament  stand  in  no 
necessary  connexion  with  the  use  of  the  word  "Messiah." 
Broadly  speaking,  those  passages  are  Messianic  which  promise 
a  delivery  from  present  distress,  either  through  the  direct  inter- 
vention of  Yahaweh,  the  God  and  King  of  Israel,  or  through 
a   Davidic   sovereign   (or  David   himself),  the   vicegerent  of 
Yahaweh  and  the  representative  of  His  divinity  upon  earth, 

^  Corrected  in  the  Canterbury  Revision. 
135 


136   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

or  through  a  human  agent,  outside  of  the  Davidic  dynasty, 
anointed  by  Yahaweh  for  that  purpose;  those  passages  are 
Messianic  which  foretell  a  millennial  kingdom  over  which 
Yahaweh  will  reign  either  mediately  or  immediately,  or  which 
describe  the  preparation  for  this  millennial  kingdom  through  a 
Davidic  sovereign,  or  through  the  people  of  Israel  as  specially 
appointed  to  that  mission  by  Yahaweh;  those  passages  are 
Messianic  which  describe  the  experiences  of  the  ideally  perfect 
"  Servant  of  Yahaweh." 

The  prophetic  concept  of  the  relation  of  God,  as  Yahaweh, 
to  Israel,  inherited  from  Moses,  was  that  of  the  direct  govern- 
ment by  God  of  His  people.  Moses  did  not  unify  the  people 
into  a  nation,  because  of  his  conception  of  a  theocratic  empire. 
God  must  directly  rule  over  His  people.  This  concept  was 
ideal,  impracticable,  as  the  history  of  Israel  proves;  but  it 
contained  a  fruitful  germ  of  heavenward  progress,  which  was 
the  divine  essence  of  the  Mosaic  concept.  After  the  practical 
needs  of  their  situation  had  forced  upon  the  Hebrews  centrali- 
sation and  regal  authority,  the  prophets  still  adhered  to  this 
Mosaic  concept,  modified  and  further  idealised  by  the  new 
conditions.  It  is  this  which  enables  them  steadfastly  to  look 
forward  to  the  Messianic  Kingdom  of  God's  rule  upon  earth. 
But  in  order  that  a  conception  so  ideal  and  exalted  might  be 
effective  for  the  education  and  development  of  the  people  at 
large,  it  must  operate  upon  lower  and  more  worldly  sentiments. 
The  lower  instrument  through  which  it  was  to  act  was  found  in 
the  royal  form  of  government,  or  perhaps  we  might  say  in  the 
person  of  one  of  the  kings  of  Israel.  , 

•  Anyone  who  has  considered  those  Messianic  passages 
which  are  concerned  with  a  personal,  human  Messiah  must, 
I  think,  have  observed  this  phenomenon — that  this  phase 
of  the  Messianic  hope  emanates  from  the  person  of  David. 
He  is  the  great  Messiah  of  God  in  the  past  to  whom  the 
people  longingly  look  back.  It  is  his  glory,  like  the  glory 
of  the  Roman  Caesar,  which  in  each  new  age  is  reflected 
over  his  descendants.  It  is  a  return  of  the  Davidic  greatness 
which  is  looked  for  in  the  future.     An  idealised  David  is  the 


THE   MESSIANIC    HOPE  137 

type  of  the  royal  human  Messiah.  In  seeking  a  human  basis 
for  the  Messianic  hope  we  must  begin  here.  This  basis  is  one 
common  to  the  Israelites  with  other  people.  It  is  that  longing 
for  the  glory  of  the  past,  which  is  driven  by  the  utter  lack  of 
its  realisation  in  the  present  first  into  hope,  and  then  into 
belief,  in  its  restoration  in  the  future.  The  British  belief  in 
the  return  of  an  Arthur,  or  the  German  hope  of  the  reappearance 
of  a  Charlemagne  or  Frederick  Barbarossa,  were  in  origin  the 
same  as  the  Israelitish  expectation  of  the  second  David,  a 
longing  for  the  glory  of  the  past,  metamorphosed  through  much 
meditation  on  its  happiness  in  time  of  present  distress  into  the 
hope  of  its  restoration  in  the  future. 

Anyone  who  has  studied,  with  any  sort  of  appreciation, 
popular  beliefs  and  myths  and  legends,  realises  that  such  a 
belief  as  this  is  neither  quite  literal  nor  altogether  ideal.  It 
connects  itself  literally  with  the  name,  the  place,  the  family  of 
David,  and  yet  what  it  looks  for  is  not  David,  but  the  kingdom 
and  glory  of  David ;  so  that  at  times  it  even  seems  ready, 
under  peculiar  circumstances,  to  loose  its  hold  on  the  Davidic 
personality,  and  to  look  for  the  royal  deliverer  in  a  Cyrus  or  a 
Maccabseus.  It  is  the  popular  mind,  in  distinction  from 
the  thoughtful  leaders,  to  which  the  Davidic  idea  is  most 
essential ;  which  connects  its  hopes  most  closely  with  a  literal 
descendant  of  David,  in  whom  he  shall  be  repersonified  in 
all  his  ideal  glory.  Of  course,  this  hope  of  a  Davidic  Messiah 
who  shall  restore  the  Davidic  glory  must  result  in  the  ideal- 
isation of  its  hero  in  the  past  as  well  as  in  the  future,  and 
hence  we  have  the  phenomenon  of  a  double  David  in  the  Bible 
— the  historical,  actual  David,  and  the  mythical,  ideal  David. 
This  idealisation  the  prophets  make  a  fulcrum  for  their  lever, 
their  function  being  to  lift  the  Messianic  hope  of  a  second 
kingdom  of  David  into  spiritual  realms.  The  part  which  this 
Davidic  hope  played  in  moulding  the  history  and  character  of 
the  Jewish  people  and  maintaining  their  nationality  intact  was 
enormous.  The  strength  of  that  hope  in  Old  Testament 
times  is  evidenced  by  psalmody  and  prophecy,  and  in  a  later 
age  both  by  the  apocalyptic  literature  which  it  called  forth  and 


138    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

by  the  insurrections  to  which  it  gave  rise.  Even  the  hatred 
which  the  oppression,  immorality,  and  idolatry  of  Solomon 
and  his  son  aroused  in  the  hearts  of  the  Israelites  of  the 
northern  kingdom  did  not  quench  the  pride  in  David  and  his 
glory,  so  that  Amos  could  say  to  them  (ix.  ii),  "In  that 
day  will  I  raise  up  the  tabernacle  of  David  that  is  fallen, 
and  close  up  the  breaches  thereof;  and  I  will  raise  up  his 
ruins,  and  I  will  build  it  as  in  the  days  of  old  " ;  while  Hosea, 
one  of  their  number,  prophesies  (iii.  4,  5),  "  For  the  children 
of  Israel  shall  abide  many  days  without  a  king,  and  without 
a  prince,  and  without  a  sacrifice,  and  without  an  image,  and 
without  an  ephod,  and  without  teraphim :  afterward  shall 
the  children  of  Israel  return,  and  seek  Yahaweh  their  God, 
and  David  their  king;  and  shall  fear  Yahaweh  and  His 
goodness  in  the  latter  days." 

Psychologically  we  are  led  to  expect,  from  the  origin  and 
natare  of  this  hope,  that  which  we  also  find  to  be  true  regarding 
it — that  it  is  most  vividly  pictured  in  the  times  of  greatest 
distress.  Passing  over  such  passages  as  2  Samuel  vii.  16, 
where  David  is  told,  "  Thine  house  and  thy  kingdom  shall  be 
established  for  ever  before  thee ;  thy  throne  shall  be  set  up 
for  ever,"  and  the  numerous  similar  passages  in  the  Psalms 
concerning  the  glory  and  perpetuity  of  his  kingdom,  let  us 
take  up  the  still  more  minute  and  definite  passages  in  the 
Prophets;  as  when  Isaiah,  crying  out  of  the  deepest 
humiliation  of  the  kingdom  of  Judah,  yet  promises  the  people 
deliverance  at  the  hand  of  a  Davidic  ruler,  who  shall  restore  a 
spiritualised  kingdom  of  David.  Such  is  that  famous  prophecy 
(ix.  1-7)  which  ends,  "  P'or  increase  of  the  government  and  for 
peace  without  end,  upon  David's  throne,  and  upon  his  kingdom, 
to  establish  it,  and  to  order  it  with  judgment  and  with  right- 
eousness from  henceforth  and  for  ever.  The  zeal  of  Yahaweh 
Zebaoth  will  perform  this";  or  that  prophecy  which  begins 
(xi.  i),  "And  there  cometh  forth  a  rod  from  Jesse's  stem, 
and  a  Branch  groweth  from  his  roots."  Micah  sees  in  the 
sore  misery  of  Jerusalem  the  deep  darkness  that  heralds 
the  glorious  morn.     The  woes  of  Judah  are  the  birth-pangs 


THE   MESSIANIC   HOPE  139 

of    the    Messiah.     The    nation    sinks    so    low    that    she    is 
even  led  forth  out  of  Jerusalem ;  but  this  exile  is  the  pangs 
of  travail   with   the   glorious   future.      The    capital   may   be 
lost;    "but    thou,    Bethlehem    Ephratah,    though    thou    be 
little  among  the  thousands  of  Judah,  yet  out  of  thee  shall 
he    come    forth    unto    Me   that   is    to    be    ruler    in    Israel, 
whose  goings  out  have  been  from  of  old,  from  everlasting " ; 
which  is  distinctively  Davidic  prophecy,  although  by  a  poetic 
device  the  name  of  David  is  not  mentioned.      The  rise  of 
a   better    king,    Hezekiah,    renders    Isaiah's   later   Messianic 
prophecies  less  definite  and  personal,  and  he  even  seems  half 
ready  to  accept  Hezekiah  himself  as  the  restorer  of  the  Davidic 
kingdom.     Again,  under  a  bad  king,  in  times  of  great  distress, 
Jeremiah  (xxiii.  5)  foretells  a  righteous  branch  to  David,  and 
(xxx.  9)  that  the  people  freed  from  bondage  shall  serve  "  David 
their  king."     In  the  time  of  the  Exile  Ezekiel  is  almost  prosaic 
in  the  literalness  with  which  he  uses  the  Davidic  personality, 
as  where  he  says  (xxxiv.  23),  "And  I  will  set  over  them  one 
shepherd,  and  he  shall  herd  them,  even  My  servant  David ;  he 
shall  herd  them,  and  he  shall  be  to  them  a  shepherd";  or 
(xxxvii.  24,  25),  "And  My  servant  David  king  over  them;  for 
one  shepherd  shall  be  for  them  all :  and  in  My  religion  shall 
they  walk,  and  My  statutes  shall  they  hear  and  do  them ;  and 
they  shall  dwell  in  the  land  which  I  gave  to  My  servant,  to 
Jacob,  in  which  their  fathers  dwelt ;  yea  they  shall  dwell  in  it, 
they  and  their  sons,  and  their  sons'  sons,  for  ever,  and  David 
My  servant  prince  over  them  for  ever." 

After  the  Exile  Haggai  sees  in  Zerubbabel,  as  the  descen- 
dant of  David,  him  who  is  to  fulfil  the  hope  of  a  Davidic 
restoration,  and  the  book  of  his  prophecies  closes  with  a 
distinct  expression  of  that  view  (ii.  23);  "In  that  day,  saith 
Yahaweh  Zebaoth,  will  I  take  thee  Zerubbabel,  son  of 
Shealtiel,  My  servant,  saith  Yahaweh,  and  will  make  thee  as 
a  signet,  for  thee  I  have  chosen,  saith  Yahaweh  Zebaoth." 
Zechariah  seems  at  first  to  entertain  the  same  hope  (iv.  7  ff.), 
but  Zerubbabel  is  not  the  man  to  restore  Davidic  glory ;  he 
can  only  shine  in  the  borrowed  lustre  of  his  ancestors.     Then 


I40   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Joshua,  the  High  Priest,  is  declared  to  be  the  Branch  (vi.  12), 
and  you  have  the  same  combination  of  priest  and  king  in  the 
Messianic  concept,  which  appears  in  Psalm  ex.  Joshua,  the 
Branch,  is  placed  upon  a  theocratic  throne  (vi.  13).  It  is  the 
failure  of  the  worthless  successors  of  David  to  fulfil  the  ex- 
pectation of  the  people  which  causes  the  Davidic  element  to 
vanish  for  a  time,  supplanted  by  the  priestly. 

It  must  not  be  supposed,  however,  that  the  people  altogether 
abandoned  their  idea  of  a  Davidic  restoration.     Events  show 
that  it  still  lingered  on.    The  history  of  the  people  to  the  time 
of   the  Maccabsean  revolt  is  one  of  insignificance  and  failure, 
but  not  oppression,  and  we  find,  accordingly,  no  vivid  expres- 
sion of  the  expectation  of  a  personal,  Davidic  Messiah.     The 
line  of  David  has  sunk  into  obscurity  and  oblivion.     Malachi 
speaks  only  of  a  millennial  kingdom,  and  of  Elijah  as  the 
herald  of  its  coming.     After  the  story  of  the  assumption  of 
Elijah  into  heaven  (2  Kings  ii.  11)  it  seemed  a  moral  certainty 
that  a  belief  in  his  return  would  spring  up.     The  Book  of 
Malachi  contains  the  first  definite  expression  of  this  belief, 
which  plays  so  important  a  part  in  the  Christological  scheme 
of  the  Pharisees.     The  Seleucid  oppression  and  the  Macca- 
baean  revolt  again  fanned  into  a  flame  the  smouldering  fires  of 
the  Messianic  hope  in  the  restoration  of  national  greatness, 
as  is  proven  as  well  from  the  history  of  the  period  as  from  the 
Book  of  Daniel.     The  lack  of  a  prominent  representative  or 
descendant   of   David   prevents  the   author   of   Daniel   from 
representing  the  new  kingdom  as  Davidic.     It  is  pictured  as 
an  earthly  rule  of  Yahaweh  through  an  undesignated,  semi- 
divine  hero,  under  whom  the  saints  shall  possess  the  earth. 
The  popular  mind,  finding  Judas  Maccabaeus  to  be  a  hero, 
seems  to  have  been  inclined  to  see  in  him  and  his  house, 
despite   non-Davidic   origin,   the   returned    David.     But   this 
delusion  soon  passed  away,  and  the  apocalyptic  literature  of 
the  immediately  following  period  shows  us  the  Davidic  hope 
stronger  and  more  definite  than  ever  before.     The  Psalter  of 
Solomon,  for  example,  gives  us  an  excellent  idea  of  the  way 
in   which   the   temporary   belief   in   the   Asmonaean   dynasty 


THE   MESSIANIC   HOPE  141 

served,  after  the  delusion  was  realised,  to  revive  and  strengthen 
the  Davidic  hope ;  and  from  this  period  until  Kokba  and  the 
final  revolt  against  Hadrian  the  air  was  full  of  the  expectation 
of  the  Messiah  of  David's  line. 

I  have  thus  endeavoured  to  describe  the  rise  of  the  hope  of  ^ 
a  Davidic  Messiah — that  is,  of  a  ruler  of  David's  line  who 
should  restore  the  glory  of  the  idealised  kingdom  of  David — 
and  to  point  out  that  in  its  origin  this  hope  was  one  common 
to  Israel  with  other  nations — a  hope  conceived  by  desire,  and 
born  of  adversity.  This  hope  I  have  briefly  sought  to  trace 
through  the  uncertain  stages  of  its  incipiency  until  it  assumed 
fixed  form  in  the  latter  days  of  the  Asmonsean  dynasty. 

This  is  the  popular  element  which  constitutes  the  warp  of 
the  ultimate,  realised  hope.  The  woof  which  was  woven  into 
this  warp  was  the  grand  teaching  that  Yahaweh  Himself  is 
King  of  Israel,  and  Israel  His  chosen,  His  anointed.  The 
rule  of  an  earthly  king  is  possible  only  on  the  theory  that  he 
is  the  representative  and  vicegerent  of  Yahaweh,  the  embodi- 
ment of  His  righteousness  on  earth.  Notwithstanding  the 
unrighteousness  of  each  successive  Davidic  sovereign,  the 
perfect,  unhistorical  David  of  their  ideal  enables  the  prophets 
to  look  forward  to  an  ultimate  righteous  king  of  David's  line, 
the  true  representative  of  Divinity  on  earth,  under  whom  and 
in  whom  is  realised  the  ideal  Israel. 

Anyone  reading  carefully  the  vision  of  Isaiah  (vi.),  the 
record  of  his  call  to  prophecy,  must  see  how  deeply  the 
prophet  was  impressed  with  a  sense  of  his  people's  wicked- 
ness. Yahaweh,  the  pure  and  righteous  Divinity,  cannot 
accept  the  people  in  its  present  condition,  and  yet  it  is  utterly 
impossible  that  He  should  destroy  or  abandon  His  people; 
therefore  He  will  purge  them  with  a  great  calamity,  "  until  the 
cities  are  desolate  without  inhabitant,  and  the  houses  without 
man,  and  the  field  lieth  waste,"  until  it  seems  as  though  no 
remnant  could  escape;  but  "as  the  terebinth  and  oak  when 
cut  down  grow  again  from  the  stock  that  remains  in  the 
ground,  so  shall  Israel  grow  again,  for  a  holy  seed  shall  be 
its  stock."     Here  stands  out  clearly  the  doctrine  of  the  identi- 


142  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

fication  of  Yahaweh  with  Israel,  so  that  He  cannot  forsake 
nor  destroy  His  people,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  as  a  necessary 
corielative,  the  doctrine  of  the  perfect  essence  of  the  people 
of  Israel,  which  is  purified  from  the  dross  of  common  and 
unrighteous  Israel  by  the  fire  of  affliction.  In  Joel  and 
Zephaniah,  in  some  of  the  Psalms,  and  here  and  there  in 
Isaiah  and  the  other  prophets,  the  Davidic  king  is  ignored 
and,  in  Mosaic  manner,  Yahaweh  is  represented  as  the  direct 
ruler  of  the  millennial  kingdom.  On  the  other  side,  the 
doctrine  of  the  perfect  essence  leads  to  the  doctrine  of  the 
"Servant  of  Yahaweh''  in  Deutero-Isaiah  and  some  of  the 
Psalms.  The  teaching  that  Yahaweh  is  King  of  Israel,  and 
that  Israel  is  His  chosen  people,  is  developed,  therefore,  in 
two  directions ;  and  with  the  fundamental  belief  in  the  restora- 
tion of  David's  glory  we  must  combine  the  doctrine  of 
Yahaweh's  immediate  action  in  the  millennial  kingdom,  and 
the  teaching  of  the  perfect  essence  suffering  for  the  imperfect 
people  at  large.  Such  doctrines  they  were  which,  woven 
together  by  scribal  study,  produced  the  systematic,  but  ap- 
parently inconsistent  Christology  of  the  Pharisees. 

Between  the  utterance  of  the  Messianic  prophecies  and  the 
ministry  of  Jesus  there  intervened  a  period  which  had  a  very 
considerable  part  to  play  in  the  preparation  for  the  Messiah. 
In  the  first  place,  it  was  sufficiently  long  to  allow  the  varied 
conceptions  of  the  prophets  to  crystallise  into  dogma  and 
acquire  an  undisputed  claim  to  validity  as  inspired  utterances. 
The  change  of  language  was  also  a  factor  in  this  process, 
putting  the  ancient  writings  under  seal,  as  it  were.  In  the 
second  place,  the  full  execution  of  the  Law  of  Moses  during 
this  period  united  the  people  among  themselves,  and  secured 
them  from  external  interference  during  the  process  of  dogma- 
tisation;  further,  it  removed  sacrifice  altogether  out  of  the 
sphere  of  the  common  life  of  the  people,  idealising  and 
refining  it.  The  festal  side  of  sacrifice  was  suppressed,  and 
the  expiatory  notion  emphasised.  The  Law  laid  great  stress 
on  the  sinfulness  of  the  people  and  the  necessity  of  making 
atonement  for  sin,  and  post-legal  developments  emphasised 


THE   MESSIANIC   HOPE  143 

this  even  more  strongly.  But  while  one  tendency  of  this 
period  was  to  impress  upon  the  people  their  sinfulness  and 
the  necessity  of  expiation,  at  the  same  time  the  expiatory 
sacrifice  was  removed  out  of  the  popular  sphere,  idealised, 
and  surrounded  with  a  mystic  halo  of  awe  and  glory.  On 
another  side  the  exaltation  of  the  Law  led  to  the  synagogical 
system,  with  its  development  of  personal  religion.  In  the 
third  place,  during  this  period  was  developed  the  Pharisaic 
and  popular  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  of  the  body.  Not 
to  attempt  too  many  details  of  the  preparation  of  this  period, 
the  external  history  also  played  its  part.  The  partially  success- 
ful revolt  of  the  Maccabees  revived  the  national  pride  of  the 
Jews  and  confirmed  their  belief  in  Yahaweh's  special  favour. 
That  revolt  quickened  the  Messianic  hope,  and  the  deep  and 
ever -increasing  humiliation  of  the  Roman  epoch,  following 
the  nation's  brief  dream  of  glory,  brought  it  to  birth.  From 
about  the  time  of  Jesus  until  the  time  of  Kokba,  the  nation 
was  in  a  condition  of  unrest,  hourly  expecting  what  the  rabbins 
called  "  the  birth-pangs  of  the  Messiah." 

Our  knowledge  of  what  Jews  of  Jesus'  time  expected  the 
Messiah  to  be  is  derived  from  Jewish  apocalyptic  literature,  the 
Targums,  the  Talmud,  and  the  New  Testament.  The  Targums 
give  us  what  we  may  call  official  knowledge  of  those  Old 
Testament  passages  which  were  universally  held  to  be  Messi- 
anic,  and  were  constantly  read  as  such  in  the  synagogues. 
The  date  of  the  Targums  is  uncertain.  Jewish  tradition  refers 
the  oldest  of  them  to  the  first  century,  but  critics  seem  to  have 
discredited  this  tradition.  It  is,  however,  allowed  that  at  the 
time  of  Jesus  a  Targum,  or  popular  and  explanatory  transla- 
tion of  a  large  part  or  the  whole  of  the  Old  Testament,  was  in 
use.  Whether  it  had  already  assumed  written  form,  or  was 
merely  handed  down  by  oral  tradition,  is  uncertain.  For  all 
our  purposes  the  Targums  of  Onkelos  and  Jonathan  may  be 
regarded  as  identical  with  the  Targum  of  the  time  of  Jesus ; 
for  whatever  changes,  if  any,  were  made  in  the  Messianic  pas- 
sages would  have  told  against  and  not  in  favour  of  the  Christian 
view.     Reckoning  our  Messianic  passages,  then,  according  to 


144   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

the  Targum,  we  find  represented  the  three  Messianic  concep- 
tions mentioned  above.  The  Messiah  of  the  tribe  of  Judah 
and  family  of  David  is  the  most  fully  represented  of  all.  In 
the  Targum  of  Onkelos  (Gen.  xlix.  lo)  we  read,  instead  of 
"until  Shiloh  come,"  "until  the  Messiah  come,  whose  is  the 
kingdom."  In  Numbers  xxiv.  17,  in  the  prophecy  of  Balaam, 
"  the  sceptre  out  of  Israel "  becomes  "  the  Messiah  out  of 
Israel."  The  Targum  of  Jonathan  makes  Micah  say  (v.  2) 
with  reference  to  Bethlehem  Ephratah,  "  From  thee  before  Me 
shall  arise  the  Messiah,  who  shall  be  the  bearer  of  power  over 
Israel,  whose  name  was  spoken  from  old  time,  from  days  of 
everlasting."  In  Isaiah  xi.  i  "the  rod  out  of  the  stem  of 
Jesse,  the  Branch  out  of  his  roots  "  is  explained  as  "  the  king, 
the  Messiah."  In  Jeremiah  xxiii.  5  "  the  righteous  Branch  of 
David"  is  "the  Messiah  of  righteousness"  whom  God  will 
raise  up  unto  David.  Of  passages  of  the  second  class,  those 
which  represent  God  as  an  immediate  deliverer,  Habakkuk  iii.  18 
may  serve  as  an  example.  In  the  original  we  read,  "  And  I, 
in  Yahaweh  will  I  rejoice ;  I  will  exult  in  the  God  of  my  salva- 
tion." In  explanation  of  this  the  Targum  of  Jonathan  has, 
"On  account  of  the  wonder  and  salvation  which  Thou  hast 
wrought  for  Thy  Messiah  and  for  the  remnant  of  Thy  people 
which  is  left,  said  the  prophet :  and  I,  in  the  word  of  Yahaweh 
will  I  rejoice,  and  I  will  exult  in  God,  the  worker  of  my  salva- 
tion." The  third  class,  which  represents  the  Messiah  as  the 
perfect  essence  suffering  for  the  imperfect  people  at  large,  is 
also  recognised  in  the  Targum.  The  "  Servant  of  Yahaweh  " 
of  Deutero-Isaiah  is  explained  as  the  Messiah  in  the  Targum 
of  Jonathan.  Accordingly  that  famous  passage  (Iii.  13-liii.  12) 
was  in  the  time  of  Jesus  authoritatively  explained  to  the  people 
as  Messianic.  Those  parts  of  this  passage,  however,  which 
represent  Messiah  as  making  an  atonement  were,  at  least  in 
part,  explained  away.  "  Surely  our  griefs  He  bore,  and  our 
pains  He  carried  them  "  (liii.  4)  becomes  in  the  Targum  "  For 
our  debts  will  He  pray,  and  our  misdeeds  for  His  sake  shall 
be  forgiven."  "  All  of  us  like  sheep  have  gone  astray,  each 
after  his  own  way  have  we  turned,  and  Yahaweh  hath  laid  on 


THE   MESSIANIC   HOPE  145 

Him  the  iniquity  of  us  all "  {v.  6)  is  rendered  "  It  was  the 
good  pleasure  (of  Yahaweh)  to  forgive  the  sins  of  us  all  for  His 
sake."  Weber, ^  commenting  on  this  passage,  says,  "Every- 
where, even  in  the  last  verse  ('  He  bare  the  sin  of  many,  and 
for  the  transgressors  made  He  intercession '),  the  Targum  finds 
no  representative  suffering  and  death  of  the  Messiah  to  expiate 
the  sins  of  the  people." 

I  use  the  Targum  on  the  last  cited  passages  merely  to 
establish  the  fact  that  at  the  time  of  Jesus  such  passages, 
which  represent  the  ideally  perfect  "Servant  of  Yahaweh" 
as  making  atonement  for  imperfect,  sinful  Israel,  were  in- 
terpreted as  Messianic,  not  to  show  that  the  Jews  accepted 
the  doctrine  of  the  Messiah  as  making  atonement  by  suffering 
and  death.  Whatever  part,  however,  tradition  might  play 
among  the  Jews,  it  always  rested  ultimately  on  Scripture, 
rendering  possible  an  appeal  to  the  latter  against  itself.  The 
Targumic  explanation  of  these  passages  as  Messianic  gave 
authority  for  their  application  in  the  case  of  Jesus,  while 
against  the  non-expiatory  interpretation  piit  upon  them  in 
the  Targum  it  was  quite  in  order  to  make  appeal  to  the 
original  Scripture.  The  position  of  tradition,  as  over  against 
the  Scriptures,  at  the  time  of  Jesus  was  much  the  same  as 
at  the  Reformation. 

The  early  apocalyptic  literature,  such  as  the  Psalter  of 
Solomon,  part  of  the  Book  of  Enoch,  and  part  of  the 
Sibylline  prophecies,  is  a  valuable  witness  against  a  few 
writers  who  have  imagined  the  Messianic  hope  to  have  been 
dead  at  the  time  of  Jesus,  and  have  tried  to  represent  the 
testimony  of  the  Gospels  to  an  existing  Messianic  expectation 
as  fanciful  and  false,  and  Talmudic  doctrine  and  post-Christian 
revolt  and  turbulence  among  the  Jews  as  alike  a  side  product 
of  Christianity. 

The  Talmud  and  New  Testament  must  be  studied  together. 
By  combining  incidental  allusions  in  the  New  Testament  with 
passages  of  the  Talmud  a  pretty  fair  picture  may  be  painted 
of  Jewish  belief  and  expectation  at  the  time  of  Jesus.     It 

^  Altsynagog.  TkeoLy  p.  345. 
L 


146   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

is  impossible  to  date  in  any  way  such  a  heterogeneous  mass 
of  speculation  and  tradition  as  the  Talmud.  Some  of  it  is 
very  old,  some  not.  In  some  cases  the  kernel  of  a  tradition 
may  be  old,  while  the  tradition  in  the  form  given  in  the 
Talmud  is  comparatively  new.  The  New  Testament  serves 
in  some  sort  as  a  measuring-scale  to  the  Talmud,  and  by 
a  comparison  of  the  two  some  valuable  results  are  obtained. 

Comparing,  then,  the  Talmud  and  the  New  Testament,  we 
find  a  great  resemblance  as  to  principle  in  their  method  of 
using  the  Prophets.  New  Testament  writers  frequently  tell 
us  that  this  thing  or  that  thing  was  done  "that  it  might 
be  fulfilled  which  was  written,"  or  "said."  The  Haggada  uses 
the  same  phrase  repeatedly,  telling  this  or  that  trivial  story,  it 
may  be,  to  illustrate  the  fulfilment  of  various  prophecies.  The 
principle  in  both  cases  is  that  each  word  of  prophecy  must 
find  its  fulfilment.  The  New  Testament  claim  that  Moses 
and  all  the  prophets  testified  concerning  Jesus  is  the  Talmudic 
doctrine  that  all  the  Prophets  testified  only  of  the  days  of  the 
Messiah.  The  Talmudic  idea  that  all  events,  destinies,  hopes, 
and  wishes  which  connect  themselves  with  the  Holy  Land  or 
its  inhabitants  have  been  already  announced  by  the  Prophets 
and  may  be  found  by  the  exercise  of  sufficient  ingenuity, 
is  manifestly  at  the  bottom  of  some  New  Testament  references 
to  the  Old  Testament  (such  as  Matt.  ii.  23).  But  besides 
these  agreements  of  principle,  there  is  also  agreement  as  to 
certain  points  of  detail  regarding  the  Messiah.  Edersheim, 
in  The  Life  and  Ti7nes  of  Jesus  the  Messiah^  p.  164,  mentions 
the  following  doctrines  concerning  the  Messiah  as  supported 
by  the  Talmud :  "  Premundane  existence,  elevation  above 
Moses  and  the  angels,  representative  character,  sufferings, 
violent  death  for  his  people,^  work  on  behalf  of  living,  re- 
demption and  restoration  of  Israel."  These  can  all  be  sup- 
ported from  the  Talmud,  and  yet  it  can  hardly  be  said,  I 

^  This  may  be  a  later  development  consequent  upon  the  death  of  Kokba, 
whom  Rabbi  Akiba  had  formally  declared  to  be  the  Messiah,  and  it  may 
have  been  in  the  same  connexion  that  the  idea  arose  of  a  suffering  Messiah 
of  the  tribe  of  Ephraim. 


THE   MESSIANIC    HOPE  147 

think,  that  all  of  them  are  really  taught  there.  The  great 
popular  belief  at  the  time  of  Jesus,  as  we  gather  from  a 
comparison  of  New  Testament  and  Talmud,  was  in  a  con- 
quering, human,  but  almost  superhuman  king  of  David's 
line.  Preceding  him  would  come  Elijah  to  preach  a  great 
repentance;  perhaps,  also,  Moses  and  Jeremiah,  or  yet  others 
of  the  prophets. 

Having  discussed  the  Jewish  hope  of  a  Messiah,  it  remains 
to  make  a  few  suggestions  regarding  the  bearing  of  what  has 
been  presented  on  some  parts  of  the  New  Testament.  In 
considering  the  statements  of  New  Testament  writers  with 
reference  to  Old  Testament  prophecies,  we  must  recognise 
two  opposite  possibilities :  of  inventing  or  colouring  facts  to 
make  the  actuality  correspond  with  prediction ;  of  perverting 
or  altering  a  prophecy  to  show  that  the  event  had  been 
predicted.  The  first  possibility  must  be  considered  in  those 
cases  where  we  learn  from  the  New  Testament  itself  or  from 
other  sources  that  a  strong  expectation  existed,  that  is,  in 
the  test  points  of  the  Messiahship  as  conceived  by  the  Jews. 
The  Davidic  descent  is  one  of  these  points.  Was  the  Davidic 
descent  of  Jesus  invented,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  in 
order  to  connect  Him  with  the  Messianic  predictions?  The 
genealogies  given  in  St.  Matthew  and  St.  Luke  go  for  little 
with  the  critics  in  answering  this  question.  It  is  the  incidental 
passages  in  the  Gospels  which  are  strong.  They  seem  to 
show,  without  doubt,  that  He  was  admitted  by  all.  His 
enemies  included,  to  be  a  descendant  of  David  through 
Joseph.  There  is  no  sign  in  the  whole  body  of  New  Testa- 
ment literature,  nor,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  in  Talmudic 
literature,  that  this  claim  was  seriously  contested.  We  know, 
moreover,  that  the  family  of  David  was  not  extinct  even  a 
century  after  Jesus,  so  that  the  possibility  of  testing  the  claim 
existed.  Under  these  circumstances  the  existence  of  the 
expectation  is  not  evidence  against  the  fact. 

A  minor  question,  a  side  issue  of  the  Davidic  descent, 
is  the  birth  in  Bethlehem.  Here  the  decision  is  not  so 
absolute.     Leaving  aside  the  story  of  the  birth  as  given   in 


148   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

St.  Matthew  and  St.  Luke,  there  is  no  further  notice  of  any 
connexion  which  Jesus  had  with  Bethlehem.  He  is,  on  the 
contrary,  constantly  referred  to  as  coming  from  Nazareth,  and 
that  in  cases  where  His  birth  in  Bethlehem,  had  it  been 
known,  ought  certainly,  we  should  think,  to  have  been  men- 
tioned. So  His  Nazarene  origin  was  objected  to  His 
Messianic  claims,  and  we  do  not  learn  that  the  objection 
was  answered.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  claimed,  there  are 
peculiarities  in  the  account  of  the  birth  in  Bethlehem  which 
render  it  improbable  that  it  was  invented  to  satisfy  the  terms 
"^  of  prophecy.  It  tends  to  dishonour,  so  far  as  its  main  fact 
goes,  and  not  to  honour.  It  is  too  accurate  and  circumstantial. 
The  argument  from  Jewish  expectation  may  work  here  in  two 
ways.  Primarily  it  militates  against  the  fact.  If  the  fact  that 
Jesus  was  the  Messiah  be  first  firmly  established,  a  secondary 
favourable  argument  may  be  constructed.  In  following  the 
development  of  the  Messianic  hope,  we  find  the  expectation 
of  the  restoration  of  the  Davidic  kingdom  the  fulcrum  on 
which  the  prophets  rest  their  lever  in  lifting  up  and  spiritualis- 
ing the  conceptions  of  the  people  and  preparing  them  for  the 
divine  revelation.  It  is,  then,  scarcely  conceivable  that  v/hen 
God  makes  that  revelation  He  should  throw  aside  all  that 
had  been  accomplished  by  the  prophets,  by  failing  to  build 
on  the  foundation  which  had  been  so  long  and  carefully 
prepared.  It  was,  in  point  of  fact,  impossible  to  make  a 
firm  attachment  to  the  Messianic  hopes  of  Israel  without 
Davidic  birth.  With  reference  to  this  secondary  argument  it 
must,  however,  be  observed  that  its  chief  strength  applies  to 
'  the  fact  of  Davidic  birth,  and  that  it  is  not  strong  with  reference 
to  such  a  side  issue  as  the  birth  in  Bethlehem,  until  it  be  first 
proven  that  that  is  a  necessary  part  of  the  Davidic  concept. 

The  question  regarding  the  position  of  John  the  Baptist 
may  be  referred  to  this  category,  inasmuch  as  the  expectation 
of  his  coming  formed  an  important  introductory  part  of  the 
Messianic  hope.  The  testimony  of  Josephus,  compared  with 
that  of  the  New  Testament,  gives  in  this  case  indubitable 
proof  of  the  historical  character  of  the  Baptist  and  his  work. 


THE   MESSIANIC   HOPE  149 

His  activity,  as  represented  from  both  sources,  was  such  as 
fully  to  justify  Jesus  in  pointing  to  him,  as  He  is  reported  to 
have  done,  as  fulfilling  the  expectation  comprehended  under 
the  name  Elijah,  and,  therefore,  as  an  additional  proof  of  His 
own  Messiahship.  The  question  as  to  John's  views  regarding 
both  his  own  mission  and  the  Messiah  is  more  difficult  to 
answer.  In  view  of  the  whole  condition  of  Messianic  belief 
in  his  time,  it  seems  impossible  to  hold  that  he  expected  an 
immediate  revelation  of  Yahaweh  rather  than  a  revelation 
through  a  personal  Messiah.  He  must  be  attached  to  the 
thought  of  his  own  time,  not  torn  out  of  his  connexion  and 
attached  to  a  certain  line  of  thought  in  the  past.  In  face  of 
any  direct  and  modified  evidence  to  the  contrary,  it  must  be 
assumed  that  his  thought  was  moulded  and  modified  by  the 
thought  and  conditions  of  his  time,  and  hence,  in  relation  to 
the  Messianic  hope,  that  he  looked  for  a  personal  Messiah. 
There  is  no  reason,  furthermore,  to  discredit  the  story  of  the 
three  synoptical  Gospels,  that  John  sent  to  inquire  of  Jesus 
whether  He  were  the  Messiah.  This  would  point  to  a  position 
of  friendliness  towards  Him,  with  an  inclination,  perhaps,  to 
regard  Him  as  the  Messiah,  and  yet  an  uncertainty  as  to 
whether  He  were  really  so.  The  synoptical  account  of  the 
baptism  of  Jesus  does  not,  so  far  as  the  Baptist  is  concerned, 
conflict  with  this  view.  As  to  himself,  his  attitude,  as  there 
related,  shows  both  his  greatness  and  his  littleness.  He  was 
certain  of  a  divine  mission  to  prepare  the  way  of  the  Messiah 
by  preaching  repentance;  on  the  other  hand,  he  is  not  con- 
scious of  being  literally  Elijah.  Bound  by  the  letter,  he  is 
unable  to  spiritualise  the  conception  of  the  return  of  Elijah, 
as  Jesus  did ;  hence  he  attached  himself  to  another  passage  of 
Scripture,  where  Isaiah  speaks  of  the  voice  crying  in  the 
wilderness  (the  very  passage  which  Malachi  had  developed 
into  his  prophecy  of  the  coming  of  Elijah). 

The  expectation  that  the  Messiah  would  show  signs  and 
work  wonders  cannot  reasonably  be  supposed  to  have  given 
rise  to  all  the  stories  of  the  miracles  of  Jesus,  and  need  not  be 
further  discussed  here. 


ISO   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

The  virgin  birth  of  Jesus  and  His  resurrection  from  the 
dead  belong  to  the  second  category.  The  birth  of  the 
Messiah  from  a  virgin  was  no  part  of  the  Messianic  concep- 
tion of  the  Jews.  If  we  find  such  a  belief  existing  with 
reference  to  Jesus,  we  cannot,  therefore,  suppose  that  it  was 
a  reflex  of  the  Messianic  expectation,  since  that  expectation 
involved  nothing  of  the  sort.  The  prophetic  passage  by  which 
the  virgin  birth  is  substantiated  in  the  New  Testament  is 
nowhere  explained  as  Messianic,  and  the  form  in  which  it  is 
quoted  is  found  neither  in  the  Hebrew  text  nor  in  the  Targum.^ 
As  far  as  it  goes  this  is,  then,  an  argument  in  favour  of  the 
fact.  Without  entering  into  the  question  of  fact,  it  may  be 
said  that  the  argument  against  it  from  silence  being  a  very 
strong  one,  makes  it  advisable  that  apologists  should  avoid  in- 
volving this  question  with  the  question  of  the  Incarnation, 
basing  the  latter  upon  the  virgin  birth.  In  this  St.  Paul  can  be 
quoted  as  an  example. 

The  story  of  the  resurrection  from  the  dead,  like  the  story 
of  the  divine  conception,  cannot  be  derived  from  the  Jewish 
expectation  of  the  Messiah.  Jesus  seems  to  have  told  His 
disciples  that  the  Scriptures  prophesied  His  death  and  resur- 
rection,^  but  it  requires  considerable  ingenuity  to  pick  out  and 
piece  together  Scripture  texts  which  may  be  thought  to  prove 
such  a  death  and  resurrection  from  the  dead.  Certainly  it 
constituted  no  part  of  the  Jewish  doctrine  or  expectation 
regarding  the  Messiah,  as  is  abundantly  proved  by  the  con- 
current testimony  of  the  Talmud  and  the  New  Testament. 
This  is  in  so  far  an  argument  for  the  fact.  There  is  in  this 
case  no  argument  of  silence  against  the  fact.  It  was  the 
corner-stone  of  St.  Paul's  preaching,  as  proved  by  his  unim- 

^  See  Appendix,  p.  317. 

'  They  even  said  His  resurrection  on  the  third  day,  with  which  compare 
a  rabbinic  comment  of  uncertain  date  on  Hosea  vi.  2,  quoted  by  Wunsche, 
Beitrdge^  p.  197,  "All  inhabitants  of  the  earth  must  taste  of  death,  but 
God  will  renew  them  on  the  third  day,  i.e.  restore  them  to  life  and  set 
them  before  Him." 


THE   MESSIANIC   HOPE  151 

peached  letters,  within  twenty-five  years  of  the  event.  It  is 
narrated  in  all  the  Gospels.  It  is  repeatedly  mentioned  or 
referred  to  by  the  other  New  Testament  writers. 

It  may  not  be  amiss  to  add  a  few  words  regarding  the 
attitude  which  Jesus  assumed  towards  the  Messiahship,  and 
regarding  the  citation  of  the  Old  Testament  in  the  New  for 
the  purpose  of  showing  that  Jesus  was  the  fulfilment  in  detail 
of  Messianic  prophecies.  As  to  the  latter  point,  I  apprehend 
that  there  is  a  by  no  means  contemptible  argument  for  the 
propriety  of  the  use,  within  reasonable  limits,  of  such  citation 
of  the  Old  Testament  for  details  of  the  life  of  Jesus,  and 
also  that  Jesus  is  the  fulfilment  of  such  predictions.  The 
use  of  the  Old  Testament  in  the  New  must  be  studied  in 
connexion  with  the  theological  development  and  thought  of 
the  period.  Such  and  such  passages  were  at  that  time  re- 
garded as  Messianic.  Would  it  not  be  reasonable  that  God 
should  cause  His  Messiah  to  fulfil,  to  some  extent  at  least, 
these  expectations  of  the  Jews  ?  and  was  it  not  even  necessary 
to  do  so  in  order  to  attach  Him  to  the  thought  of  the  times  ? 
If  such  a  course  was  reasonable  and  necessary,  it  may  afford 
some  clue  to  the  use  which  Jesus  Himself  makes  of  certain 
Old  Testament  passages. 

As  to  the  former  matter.  Until  the  very  end  of  His  life 
Jesus  asserted  His  Messiahship  only  to  a  trusted  few,  strictly 
forbidding  them  to  pubUsh  it.  Towards  the  people  He  main- 
tained an  attitude  of  reserve.  While  by  many  of  His  acts 
tacitly  claiming  the  Messiahship,  He  yet  did  not  at  first 
formally  and  publicly  proclaim  Himself  the  Messiah.  Indeed, 
He  could  not  have  done  so  without  exciting  a  revolt  or 
causing  His  own  premature  death.  This  position  enabled 
Him  to  establish  a  Messianic  record,  and  to  prepare  His 
disciples  for  the  work  of  proclaiming  Him  as  the  true  Messiah 
on  the  ground  of  that  record.  When  He  did  at  last  openly 
proclaim  Himself  to  be  the  Messiah,  which  He  did  very 
clearly — first  by  deeds  and  then  in  words — it  was  so  done 
that  a  revolt  was  avoided,  and  His  death  ensued  in  a  manner 
according  with  the  Old  Testament  prophecies  authoritatively 


152   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

set  forth  as  Messianic.  The  object  of  His  course  in  these 
particulars  seems  to  have  been  to  enable  His  followers  to 
p'-each  Him  as  the  true  Messiah  on  the  ground  of  the  record 
which  He  made. 

Studying  the  life  and  teaching  of  Jesus  in  connexion  with 
the  life  and  thought  of  His  times,  we  find  Him  attaching 
Himself  thoroughly  to  that  life  and  thought,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  we  find  Him  revolutionising  them — revolutionising  them, 
however,  to  some  extent  in  the  same  way  in  which  the 
Reformers  revolutionised  their  times,  namely,  by  going  back 
to  that  which  was  more  primitive.  Through  and  over  the 
teachings  and  traditions  of  the  rabbins  and  the  peculiarly 
Jewish  conception  of  His  compeers.  He  appeals  to  the 
prophets.  The  intervening  period  had  done  its  work  of 
preparation,  and  must  now  be  carried  back  to  union  with 
the  past.  Jesus  is  the  manifestation  of  Yahaweh.  He  is  the 
ideal  Israel;  or,  more  cathohc  than  prophecy  in  His  fulfil- 
ment of  its  concept.  He  is  ideal  humanity,  the  heaven-throned 
apex  of  that  pyramid  whose  base  is  mankind  at  large  and  its 
middle  point  the  church  of  the  saints.  The  careful  prepara- 
tion for  the  manifestation  of  a  Messiah,  the  gradual  elevation 
of  a  common  human  longing  to  a  glorious  aspiration,  the 
fulfilment  of  which  could  be  found  only  in  some  manifestation 
of  the  Deity,  seems  to  argue  most  strongly  a  Divine  purpose, 
and  to  confirm  our  belief  that  He  whose  life  both  fulfilled 
and  elevated  that  aspiration  was  Messiah  and  was  Divine. 
Jesus,  if  His  claims  be  allowed,  was  Messiah  in  this  threefold 
manner — the  human  descendant  of  David ;  ideally  perfect 
humanity  suffering  for  the  imperfect;  the  Divinity  manifested. 
The  first  and  lowest  of  these  was  an  instrumentality  for  the 
revelation  of  the  other  two.  The  belief  in  the  Davidic 
sovereign  played  the  important  part  it  did,  in  order  that  there 
might  be  a  point  of  attachment  to  the  natural  human  longing 
of  the  people,  to  lift  their  thoughts  and  hopes  to  a  higher 
truth. 


Part  III 
THE  BOOK  OF  PSALMS 


CHAPTER  VIII 
THE   GROWTH   OF   THE   JEWISH    PSALTER 

OLD  Testament  criticism  has  established  by  analysis  of 
the  Law,  the  Prophets,  and  those  historical  documents 
which  have  come  down  to  us,  the  fact  of  a  growth  or  evolu- 
tion in  the  religion  of  Israel.  An  attempt  is  now  being  made 
to  determine  the  relation  of  the  Psalter  to  this  religious 
evolution,  and  thus  to  fix  the  dates  both  of  the  Psalter  and 
of  the  individual  psalms  which  compose  it. 

The  Psalter  was,  admittedly,  a  church  hymnal.     Now  it  is 

certainly  true  of  the  hymns  contained  in  modern  collections 

of  hymns  for  Church  use  that  few  or  none  of  those  more  than 

a  century  old  are  sung  as  they  issued  from  the  author's  hand. 

The  more  popular  a  hymn,  moreover,  the  more  liable  it  is 

to  change,  and  the  great  hymns  of  the  Church  have  been 

gradually  moulded  into  their  present  shape  by  a  long  process 

of  manipulation.     In  fact,   an  excellent  introduction  to  the 

study  of  the  Psalter  is  the  Te  Deiim.     An  ancient  hymn  of 

uncertain  origin  and  gradual  growth,  in  later  ages  confidently 

ascribed  to  those  famous  fathers  of  the  Church,  Ambrose  and 

Augustine,  and   to  a  particular  occasion   in  the  life  of  the 

latter,  it  has  a  history  instructively  parallel  to  that  of  more 

than  one  of  the  Psalms  of  David.     We  may  lay  it  down  as 

a  principle  universally  applicable  in  criticism  of  hymns  and 

songs  long  in  popular  use,  that  they  change  and  grow  in  the 

mouth  of  the  people.     If  this  is  true  of  the  West,  even  down 

to   our  own  time,   much   more  was   it  true  of  the   days  of 

primitive  antiquity,  and  among  the  Oriental  Hebrews,  careless 

155 


IS6   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

as  we  know  them  to  have  been,  until  a  comparatively  late 
date,  about  any  text  but  that  of  the  Law. 

V/e  are  not  confined  to  an  argument  from  principle  and 
analogy.  There  are  not  a  few  psalms  in  which  both  change 
and  growth  are  patent  to  the  most  casual  observer.  Such  are 
Psalms  ix.  and  x.,  which  together  originally  constituted  an 
alphabetic  acrostic,  every  second  verse  commencing  with  a 
different  letter  in  the  order  of  the  alphabet.  Of  the  original 
poem,  so  easily  traceable  owing  to  this  alphabetic  arrange- 
ment, the  first  eighteen  verses  of  the  ninth  and  the  last  seven 
verses  of  the  tenth  Psalm,  representing  the  first  ten  (Z>  has 
dropped  out)  and  the  last  four  letters  of  the  alphabet,  are 
preserved  almost  unchanged.  But  instead  of  sixteen  inter- 
vening verses,  representing  the  other  eight  letters  of  the 
Hebrew  alphabet,  we  now  have  thirteen  verses  entirely  without 
acrostic  arrangement.  In  other  words,  for  some  reason,  this 
originally  alphabetic  psalm  was  afterwards  modified  by  the 
removal  of  more  than  a  third  of  the  original  number  of  verses 
and  the  substitution  of  others,  in  which  no  attempt  was  made 
to  preserve  the  alphabetically  acrostic  arrangement.  More- 
over, the  inserted  verses  (which,  by  the  way,  present  a  corrupt 
and  ill-preserved  text  in  striking  contrast  to  the  rest  of  the 
psalm)  are  quite  opposite  in  tone  to  the  original  portion. 
This  is  hopeful  and  almost  triumphant,  while  the  newer  part 
is  mournful  and  complaining. 

Another  example  of  the  addition  of  mournful  verses  to  a 
joyful  hymn  is  furnished  in  Psalm  xliv.  Here  the  first  eight 
verses,  closed  with  a  Selah  in  the  Hebrew,  constitute  an 
original  triumph-song,  to  which  a  later  poet  added  a  much 
longer  dirge  of  lamentation.  This  method  of  growth,  by 
addition  at  the  end  rather  than  insertion  in  the  middle,  is 
naturally  the  more  common.  Still  another  example  is  Psalms 
xlii.  and  xliii.  These  two  are  one  psalm,  consisting  of  three 
strophes,  each  strophe  closing  with  the  same  refrain.  The 
last  strophe  is  of  later  origin  than  the  others,  and  was  com- 
posed upon  the  second  strophe  as  a  basis.  Similarly  in 
Psalm  iv.  the  last  four  verses  are  a  later  composition,  made 


GROWTH    OF   THE   PSALTER  157 

up  of  citations  from  or  allusions  to  other  writings,  after  the 
manner  of  Psalm  Ixxxvi.  It  can  be  shown  that  Psalms  iii., 
xlvi.,  Ixxx.,  and  not  a  few  others,  have  grown  in  a  similar  way 
by  the  addition  of  new  stanzas,  sometimes  as  long  as  the 
original  poem,  or  longer.  In  other  cases  two  or  more  separate 
psalms  have  been  welded  into  one,  as  in  xix.,  xl.,  and  Ixxvii. 
This  seems  to  have  been  a  common  method  of  composition 
in  the  later  period.  An  excellent  example  of  its  use  is  fur- 
nished in  I  Chronicles  xvi.,  where  a  psalm  of  David  is 
composed,  as  if  on  purpose  for  our  instruction,  out  of  Psalms 
cv.,  xcvi.,  and  cvi.  Similarly  Psalm  cviii.  was  composed  out 
of  Psalms  Ivii.  and  Ix. 

There  are  also  a  few  psalms  in  which  we  can  show  the 
composition  of  a  longer  liturgical  hymn,  or  part  of  a  hymn, 
for  a  more  ancient,  shorter  liturgical  formula  as  a  theme  or 
motive.  Psalm  Ixviii,,  in  its  original  form,  was  composed  on 
the  theme  of  the  ancient  formulae  of  the  ark  contained  in 
Numbers  x.  35,  36.  Psalm  cxviii.  is  founded  on  the  ancient 
sacrificial  chant :  "  Give  thanks  to  Yahaweh  Zebaoth,  for 
Yahaweh  is  good,  for  His  mercy  endureth  for  ever"  (Jer. 
xxxiii.  11).  Psalms  cvi.  and  cvii.  make  free  use  of  the  same 
theme ;  Psalm  cxxxvi.  reborrows  it  from  cxviii.  and  develops  it 
still  further.  More  common  is  the  addition  of  a  refrain  to 
mark  the  close  of  a  stanza  musically,  the  insertion  of  single 
verses  of  an  explanatory  or  parenthetical  character,  or  the 
addition  of  what  might  be  called  a  postscript  at  the  end  of  a 
psalm.  A  good  example  of  the  addition  of  a  refrain  may  be 
found  in  Psalm  xlii.,  or  still  better  in  Psalm  xlvi.,  where  it  is 
rendered  more  apparent  by  the  fact  that  the  refrain  (vv.  7  and 
11)  is  Yahawistic,  while  the  psalm  is  Elohistic.  In  Psalm  xlii. 
a  later  Yahawistic  recension  is  evidently  responsible  for  the  in- 
sertion of  verse  8,  which  destroys  the  symmetry  of  the  strophes 
and  interrupts  the  movement  of  thought.  Verses  20  and  2 1 
of  Psalm  li.  may  be  taken  as  a  specimen  of  the  postscript. 
The  object  of  these  verses,  according  to  nearly  all  the  critics, 
was  to  give  a  sacrificial  character  to  an  anti-sacrificial  psalm. 
Their  relation  to  the  remainder  of  the   psalm  in  regard  of 


158   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

their  content  may  be  compared  with  the  relation  of  the 
speech  of  Elihu  (chaps,  xxxii.-xxxvii.)  to  the  remainder  of  the 
Book  of  Job.  In  several  cases  these  postscripts  are  marked 
by  the  use  of  Adonai  (Lord),  where  the  psalm  itself  has 
consistently  employed  either  Yahaweh  (LORD),  or  Elohim 
(God).  This  would  seem  to  indicate  an  Adonistic  recension 
of  the  Psalter,  or  some  parts  of  it.  Such  an  Adonistic  post- 
script has  been  added,  for  example,  at  the  close  of  the  already 
composite  Psalm  xliv. 

This  brief  statement  gives  a  very  inadequate  view  of  the 
amount  and  nature  of  the  changes  which  have  taken  place  in 
the  growth  of  individual  psalms  and  which  render  necessary  the 
greatest  caution  in  any  attempt  to  date  them  by  their  contents. 

Again,  if  the  Psalter  was  the  hymn-book  of  the  Jewish 
Church,  it  follows  from  all  analogies  that  it  represents  largely 
the  popular  side  of  religion.  Now  the  spiritual  leaders  are 
in  advance  of  the  people,  and  even  after  they  are  canonised 
the  general  belief  of  the  Church  still  lags  behind  them.  More- 
over, popular  belief,  or  the  belief  of  the  Church  at  large,  is 
inconsistent.  It  accepts  the  prophets  on  the  one  side,  and 
inherited  forms  and  even  superstitions  on  the  other;  sub- 
scribes to  the  one,  and  practises  in  large  measure  the  other. 
The  popular  belief  of  the  Church  can  never  be  measured  by 
the  strict  canons  of  the  theologians.  So  it  comes  to  pass  that 
people  will  profess  orthodoxy  in  their  creeds  and  sing  heresy 
in  their  favourite  hymns  with  the  most  naive  unconsciousness 
of  any  inconsistency  between  them.  All  this  must  be  care- 
fully taken  into  account  in  a  critical  study  of  the  Psalter.  I 
do  not  mean  to  deny  that  there  are  not  a  few  psalms  which  are 
quite  abreast  of  the  thought  of  the  spiritual  leaders,  having, 
indeed,  been  composed  by  them.  I  also  recognise  the  fact 
that  the  whole  Psalter  received  a  certain  priestly  tinge  or  bias 
from  its  use  in  the  Temple,  and  that  a  considerable  portion  of 
the  last  two  books  was  actually  composed  in  the  Temple  itself, 
or  under  the  immediate  influence  of  the  Temple  service.  But, 
as  a  whole,  the  Psalter  represents,  like  all  hymnals,  what  we 
may  roughly  call  the  popular  theology,  inconsistent  and  un- 


GROWTH    OF   THE   PSALTER  159 

theological,  if  I  may  be  permitted  the  paradox,  not  to  be  com- 
pared too  closely  with  the  ritual  of  the  priests,  the  canons  of 
the  lawgiver,  or  the  sermons  of  the  prophet. 

The  Psalter,  as  we  have  it,  is  divided  into  five  books,  as 
follows :  i.-xh.,  xlii.-lxxii.,  Ixxiii.-lxxxix.,  xc.-cvi.,  cvii.-cl. 
This  division  is  indicated  in  the  text  by  the  directions, 
"second  book,"  "third  book,"  etc.  Each  book,  except  the 
last,  is  also  provided  with  a  doxology.  Thus  verse  13  of 
Psalm  xli.  reads  : — 

"  Blessed  be  Yahaweh,  God  of  Israel, 
From  everlasting  to  everlasting. 
Amen  and  amen. " 

In  Psalm  Ixxii.,  verses  18  and  19  constitute  the  doxology; 
in  Psalm  Ixxxix.,  verse  52;  in  Psalm  cvL,  verse  48.  At  the 
end  of  the  fifth  book  there  is  no  separate  doxology;  but 
Psalm  cl.  is  ordinarily  regarded  as  taking  its  place,  both  for 
that  book  and  also  for  the  whole  collection. 

This  division  into  five  books  is  found  in  the  Septuagint 
Greek  translation  as  well  as  in  the  Hebrew  original;  this 
would  seem  to  show  that  the  division  existed  before  this  trans- 
lation was  made — probably  some  time  in  the  second  century 
B.C.  This  fivefold  division  makes  the  Psalter  singularly 
symmetrical  with  the  five  books  of  the  Law;  it  is  generally 
supposed  to  have  been  made  for  that  express  purpose,  as  it  is 
an  artificial  division — at  least  in  part — and  clearly  not  original. 
An  examination  of  the  Psalms  themselves  shows  us  an  earlier 
division  into  three  books  instead  of  five.  The  division 
between  Psalms  cvi.  and  cvii.  corresponds  to  no  natural 
division  in  the  Psalter.  Beginning  with  Psalm  ciii.,  we  have  a 
series  of  five  psalms  dealing  with  the  wonderful  works  of  God 
in  creation  and  in  the  history  of  Israel,  evidently  placed 
together  because  of  their  contents.  Especially  is  this  true  of 
Psalms  cv.,  cvi.,  and  cvii.,  which  all  begin  with  the  same 
formula,  "  O  give  thanks  unto  Yahaweh ! "  Moreover,  while 
Psalm  ciii.  bears  the  heading,  "  A  Psalm  of  David,"  and  cviii. 
the  similar  heading,  "A  Song,  a  Psalm  of  David,"  Psalms 
civ. -cvii.    have   no   headings.      The   heading   of    Psalm   ciii. 


i6o  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

belongs  to  Psalms  ciii.-cvii.  as  constituting  one  piece.  They 
formed  a  whole  by  themselves,  and  the  division  was  made 
after  they  had  been  collected  into  one.  This  shows  that 
Psalms  xc.-cl,  or  a  portion  of  those  psalms  in  which  both 
cvi.  and  cviii.  were  included,  once  formed  one  collection  or 
book  of  psalms,  which  was  later  divided  into  two  parts,  and  a 
doxology  inserted  after  Psalm  cvi.  to  mark  the  division.  The 
division  itself  was  probably  made  in  order  to  raise  the  number 
of  books  to  five,  after  the  analogy  of  the  Pentateuch.  But 
why  divide  at  precisely  this  point  ?  The  reason  seems  to  me 
not  hard  to  find.  The  first  three  books  of  the  Psalter  had 
already  been  divided  as  at  present,  and  the  last  of  those  books 
happened  to  contain  seventeen  psalms.  The  same  number 
was  counted  off  from  the  last  collection  to  constitute  Book  iv., 
and  so  it  chanced  that  the  division  fell  thus  inappropriately 
between  Psalms  cvi.  and  cvii.,  which  properly  belong  to  one 
and  the  same  series. 

The  division  between  Psalms  Ixxii.  and  Ixxiii.,  while  older 
than  that  between  cvi.  and  cvii.,  is  itself  not  original.  Between 
Psalms  xli.  and  xlii.,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  a  natural  and 
original  division ;  for,  in  the  psalms  of  the  first  book,  Yahaweh 
is  regularly  used  as  the  name  of  God ;  but  in  the  second, 
Elohim.  Analysing  the  contents  of  the  second  and  third 
books  according  to  the  headings,  we  find  Psalms  xlii.-xlix. 
ascribed  to  the  "  Sons  of  Korah " ;  Psalm  1.  is  a  "  Psalm  of 
Asaph";  Psalms  li.-lxxii.  form  a  collection  described  by  a 
colophon  attached  to  the  end  of  Psalm  Ixxii.,  as  the  "  Prayers 
of  David,  son  of  Jesse."  Psalms  Ixxiii.-lxxxiii.,  like  Psalm  1., 
are  described  as  Psalms  of  Asaph.  All  of  these  psalms  up  to 
this  point  are  characterised  by  the  use  of  Elohim  as  the  name 
of  the  Deity.  Then  follow  six  psalms  of  a  composite  nature, 
in  which  the  name  Yahaweh  is  used.  Of  these.  Psalms  Ixxxiv., 
Ixxxv.,  Ixxxvii.,  and  Ixxxviii.  are  ascribed  to  the  sons  of 
Korah,  Ixxxviii.  being  also  ascribed  by  a  second  heading  to 
Heman  the  Ezrahite ;  Psalm  Ixxxix.  is  ascribed  to  Ethan  the 
Ezrahite ;  and  Psalm  Ixxxvi.  is  described  as  a  "  Hymn  of 
David." 


GROWTH   OF  THE   PSALTER  i6i 

Evidently  there  is  some  confusion  and  a  good  deal  of 
editing  in  these  two  books,  which,  it  is  safe  to  say,  were 
originally  one.  We  have  four  collections  before  us,  which  have 
been  edited  and  joined  together.  Psalms  xlii.-xlix.  constituted 
a  collection  of  songs  of  the  sons  of  Korah,  Psalms  1.  and 
Ixxiii.-lxxxiii.  a  collection  of  songs  of  Asaph,  Psalms  li.-lxxii. 
a  collection  called  "Prayers  of  David,  son  of  Jesse."  These 
three  collections  were  all  Elohistic.  I  am  inclined  to  think 
that  they  originally  followed  one  another  in  the  order  given, 
but  by  some  accident  a  dislocation  took  place,  and  the 
"  Prayers  of  David,  son  of  Jesse  "  were  inserted  between  the 
first  and  following  songs  of  the  Asaph  collection,  as  at  present. 
A  Yahawistic  editor  added  to  these  three  collections  a  small 
collection  of  six  largely  composite  psalms,  and  re-edited  the 
songs  of  the  other  collections,  inserting  a  few  verses  here  and 
there,  and  adding  several  Yahawistic  refrains.  In  this  way  the 
collection  was  made  which  now  constitutes  the  second  and 
third  books  of  the  Psalter.  The  existence  at  the  close  of 
Psalm  Ixii.  of  the  colophon,  "The  Prayers  of  David,  son  of 
Jesse  are  ended,"  led  later  to  a  division  of  the  collection 
at  that  point  into  two  books,  as  we  now  have  them. 

Without  stopping  for  the  moment  to  exhibit  the  evidence 
that  the  collection  of  the  first  book  antedates  the  collection 
of  the  second  book,  but  assuming  it  temporarily  as  a  fact, 
we  may  present  the  stages  of  the  growth  of  the  Psalter  as 
follows : — 

1.  First  collection,  Psalms  iii.-xli.,  to  which  were  ultimately 
prefixed — at  what  stage  I  do  not  know — the  anonymous 
Psalm  ii.,  and  also  an  introductory  ode.  Psalm  i.,  out  of  the 
school  of  the  proverb  writers. 

2.  Three  Elohistic  collections,  the  Psalter  of  the  sons  of 
Korah,  the  Psalter  of  Asaph,  and  the  "  Prayers  of  David,  son 
of  Jesse." 

3.  These  three  Elohistic  collections  were  re-edited  and 
combined  by  a  Yahawistic  editor,  and  Psalms  Ixxxiv.-lxxxix. 
added. 

4.  This    collection    was    divided    into    two    books    after 

M 


i62    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Psalm   Ixxii.,   thus   making   the   Psalter  to   consist   of  three 
books. 

5.  A  fourth  book  or  collection  was  added. 

6.  The  fourth  book  was  divided  into  two  to  make  the 
Psalter  consist,  like  the  Pentateuch,  of  five  books,  the 
division  being  made  after  Psalm  cvi.  for  the  reason  already 
assigned. 

The  above  analysis  shows  that  the  second  and  third  books 
rest  on  earlier  small  collections,  and  suggests  that  the  same 
may  be  true  of  the  other  books  of  the  Psalter.  Examining 
the  psalm-headings  as  before,  we  find  that  in  the  first  book 
all  but  four  psalms  are  ascribed  to  David.  These  four  are 
anonymous,  i.,  ii.,  x.,  and  xxxiii.  As  already  stated,  i.  and  ii. 
are  later  prefixes  to  the  collection.  Psalm  x.  is  really  a  part 
of  an  alphabetic  acrostic  of  which  ix.  is  the  first  part ;  and  in 
the  Septuagint  translation  the  two  are  still  treated  as  one. 
They  were  evidently  regarded  as  one  when  the  present 
headings  of  the  Hebrew  text  were  prefixed,  and  the  division 
into  two  psalms  is  of  very  late  origin.  For  critical  purposes 
the  heading  of  Psalm  ix.  must  be  understood  to  refer  to 
Psalm  x.  also.  In  the  same  way  we  may  conclude  that,  at 
the  time  the  headings  were  prefixed.  Psalm  xxxiii.  was  regarded 
as  part  of  Psalm  xxxii.     The  latter  ends  : — 

' '  Be  glad  in  Yahaweh,  and  rejoice,  ye  righteous : 
And  shout  for  joy,  all  ye  that  are  upright  in  heart "  ; 

and  the  former  begins  : — 

*'  Rejoice  in  Yahaweh,  O  ye  righteous  : 
Praise  is  comely  for  the  upright." 

Owing  to  this  similarity  a  connexion  was  made  between 
these  two  hymns,  with  different  metres  and  on  different 
topics,  analogous  to  that  between  the  two  parts  of  Psalm  xix., 
Psalm  xxxiii.  being  also  of  much  later  origin  than  xxxii.,  just 
as  xix.  7-14  is  later  than  xix.  1-6.  In  that  editing  of  the  first 
book  of  psalms  which  gave  us  the  headings  of  the  Hebrew 
text  Psalms  xxxii.  and  xxxiii.  were  treated  as  one  psalm ;  later 
they  were  divided.     Psalms  iii.-xli.,  therefore,  constituted  a 


GROWTH   OF   THE   PSALTER  163 

collection  which  was  known  as  "Of  David,"  i.e.  the  Psalter 
of  David,  and  which  on  the  evidence  of  the  headings  is 
homogeneous.^ 

Turning  to  the  fourth  and  fifth  books,  we  find,  still  on  the 
evidence  of  the  headings,  that  Psalms  ciii.-cvii.  and  cviii.-cx. 
are  ascribed  to  David,  and  their  consecutive  arrangement 
suggests  that  all  of  them  were  taken  from  the  same  collection, 
a  so-called  David  Psalter.  Psalms  cxi.-cxvii.  form  an  anony- 
mous hallelujah  collection,  with  cxvii.  as  doxology;  and  the 
arrangement  points  to  a  collection  composed  or  arranged 
primarily  for  liturgical  use  in  the  Temple.  Psalms  cxx.-cxxxiv., 
the  "Songs  of  Degrees,"  are  a  pilgrim  Psalter,  a  collection 
of  popular,  non-Hturgical  origin,  composed  and  used  first  by 
pilgrims  from  Babylonia  and  Persia  to  the  Temple  at  Jerusalem. 
Psalms  cxxxviii.-cxliv.  form  a  collection,  each  psalm  of  which, 
as  in  Book  I.,  is  headed,  "  Of  David."  Psalms  cxlv.-cl.  are  a 
hallelujah  chorus,  composed  or  collected  for  liturgical  purposes 
and  headed  by  the  title,  "  Praise-song  of  David." 

By  the  testimony  of  the  headings  our  Psalter  is,  then,  largely 
a  compilation  from  a  number  of  smaller  collections.  I  have 
already  tried  to  show,  in  a  general  way,  from  the  arrangement 
of  the  Psalter,  that  the  collections  of  the  second  and  third 
books  are  earlier  than  those  of  the  fourth  and  fifth,  and  by 
analogy  we  should  expect  the  collection  of  the  first  book  to 
be  earlier  than  those  of  the  second  and  third.  This  general 
argument  from  arrangement  finds  confirmation  in  a  com- 
parison of  psalms  repeated  in  different  collections,  and  by  an 
examination  of  the  relation  of  psalms  to  other  psalms  from 
which  they  quote.  There  are  two  cases  of  psalms  appearing 
in  both  the  first  and  second  books.  Psalm  xiv.  of  the  Yaha- 
wistic  Psalter  of  David,  constituting  the  first  book  of  Psalms, 
appears  in  an  Elohistic  recension  as  Psalm  liii.  in  the  collection 
called  "Prayers  of  David,  son  of  Jesse,"  included  in  the  second 
book  of  Psalms.  By  general  consent,  the  Yahawistic  recension 
of  this   psalm   is   the  more   original.     The  same  is  true  of 

^  The   musical   notes   suggest   at   least   one  earlier  smaller  collection, 
Psalms  iii.-x. 


i64  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Psalm  xL  13-17  of  the  Yahawistic  first  book,  which  appears  in 
an  Elohistic  recension  as  Psalm  Ixx.,  also  one  of  the  "  Prayers 
of  David,  son  of  Jesse."  In  neither  of  these  cases  can  we 
assert  that  one  was  borrowed  from  the  other,  but  merely  that 
the  form  in  the  first  book  seems  to  be  more  original  than  that 
in  the  second.  But  in  the  case  of  Psalm  cviii.,  in  the  fifth 
book,  we  find  unquestionably  direct  borrowing  from  Psalms 
Ivii.  and  Ix.  of  the  second  book. 

In  the  matter  of  citation  the  argument  is  similar.  Psalms 
Ixxxiv.-lxxxix.  are  composed  largely  of  citations  from  para- 
phrases of  or  enlargements  upon  other  Scriptures,  including 
psalms  which  have  preceded  them  in  the  order  of  arrangement. 
Psalm  xcvi.  cites  xxiv.,  xlvii.,  and  xlviii. ;  Psalm  xcvii.  cites 
XXX.  and  xxii. ;  Psalm  cii.  cites  Ixix. ;  Psalm  cxxxv.  uses  cxv. 
and  exxxiv. ;  Psalm  cxliii.  is  a  mosaic  of  other  earlier  psalms — 
xxvii.,  xxviii.,  Ixix.,  and  Ixxxiv. ;  and,  not  to  extend  the  list 
unduly,  Psalm  cxlvii.  makes  use  of  xxxiii.,  civ.,  and  others. 
These  psalms  all  quote  only  psalms  of  books  preceding  them 
in  the  order  of  arrangement,  with  the  possible  exception  of 
Ixxxvi.,  which,  it  is  claimed  by  some,  also  shows  acquaintance 
with  one  or  two  psalms  of  the  next  collection — a  claim  which 
I  do  not  regard  as  proved.  The  argument  from  repetitions, 
quotations,  and  references,  therefore,  supports  the  general 
argument  from  arrangement  already  presented;  and  we  may 
lay  it  down  as  a  general  proposition,  our  working  hypothesis, 
that  the  earlier  psalms  are  to  be  found  in  the  first  part  of  the 
Psalter,  particularly  in  the  first  book,  and  that  the  later  psalms 
are  in  general  to  be  sought  in  the  last  books. 

Let  us  now  take  another  step  in  our  analysis.  We  have 
seen  that  our  present  five  books  of  the  Psalter  were  originally 
three  in  number,  and  that  of  two  of  these  we  are  able  to  say 
positively,  "  This  book,  according  to  its  own  clear  testimony, 
is  made  up  of  a  number  of  minor  collections."  We  have 
seen  also  that  there  is  a  very  distinct  mark  of  division  between 
the  first  and  the  second  of  these  original  books,  in  that  the 
first  consistently  uses  Yahaweh  as  well  as  the  name  of  God, 
and   the   second,    except   in   six   appended   psalms,   Elohim. 


GROWTH   OF  THE   PSALTER  165 

The  last  part  of  the  Psalter,  Psalms  xc.-cl,  like  the  first,  uses 
the  name  of  Yahaweh  for  God,  except  in  Psalm  cviii.,  which 
was  borrowed  from  Psalms  Ivii.  and  Ix.  without  change 
of  the  Divine  name.  On  the  other  hand,  it  has  one  marked 
peculiarity  of  editing  which  distinguishes  it  sharply  from  both 
the  first  and  second  great  collections.  The  psalms  of  those 
collections  are  not  only  provided  with  such  headings  as  "  Of 
David,"  "  Of  the  sons  of  Korah,"  and  "  Of  Asaph,"  they  also 
have  headings  and  notes  which  have  reference  to  their 
musical  execution.  Many  are  headed,  "Of  the  Director"; 
others  have  the  names  of  the  tunes  to  which  they  are  to 
be  sung;  others  are  annotated  with  "Selah";  others  have 
notices  about  the  instruments  to  be  used ;  and  most  of  them 
are  designated  by  some  specific  name,  as  "mizmor,"  "maschil," 
and  "  michtam."  In  the  last  part  of  the  Psalter  there  are  very 
few  editorial  notes  of  any  sort,  and  the  musical  and  liturgical 
notices  cease  altogether,  with  the  exception  of  a  very  faint 
reflection  of  the  former  use  in  Psalm  cix.,  and  in  the  small 
collection  cxxxviii.-cxliv.,  where  it  seems  to  be  a  mere  imitation 
of  the  notes  attached  to  the  earlier  collections  which  the 
authors  of  these  psalms  used  so  freely.  The  meaning  of  this 
fact  has  been  pointed  out  by  others.  The  collection  xc.-cl.  was 
edited  as  a  part  of  the  Psalter  after  those  musical  and  liturgical  - 
notes  in  which  the  other  collections  abound  had  become  a 
dead  language.  They  were  no  longer  in  use,  and  apparently 
not  even  intelligible.  It  seems  evident,  therefore,  that  the 
first  three  books  of  the  Psalter  as  a  whole  had  been  collected 
and  edited  not  only  before,  but  a  considerable  time  before,  the 
editing  of  the  collections  of  the  last  two  books.  For  it  is  only 
by  the  supposition  of  the  lapse  of  a  considerable  interval  of 
time  that  we  can  account  for  such  a  striking  change  of  musical 
customs  and  musical  language. 

Having  obtained  a  comparative  date  for  the  various  books 
of  the  Psalter,  let  us  examine  the  further  question  of  absolute 
date.  In  i  Chronicles  xvi.  8-36  we  find  a  psalm  ascribed 
to  David,  and  said  to  have  been  given  by  him  on  that  day 
for  the  first  time  "  to  give  thanks  to  Yahaweh  by  the  hand  of 


i66   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Asaph  and  his  brethren."  But  this  psalm  is  composed  from 
three  psalms  of  the  fourth  book.  Verses  8-22  are  the  first 
fifteen  verses  of  Psalm  cv.,  verses  23-33  are  Psalm  xcvi.,  and 
verse  34  is  the  old  liturgical  formula  used  in  the  sacrificial 
ritual,  which  was  later  used,  as  has  already  been  pointed  out, 
as  the  text  of  Psalms  cvi.,  cvii.,  cxviii.,  and  cxxxvi. 

**  Give  thanks  to  Yahaweh,  for  He  is  good, 
For  His  love  endureth  for  ever." 

The  immediately  succeeding  verse,  which  quotes  verse 
47  of  Psalm  cvi.,  with  the  preface,  "And  say,"  serves  to 
show  that  this  is  here  to  be  regarded  as  a  quotation  from 
this  psalm.  Moreover,  the  following  verse  contains  the 
doxology  which  is  appended  to  this  psalm  in  the  Psalter. 
The  same  doxology  marks  the  close  of  both  the  first  and 
fourth  books ;  but  following  it,  as  it  appears  at  the  close  of 
the  fourth  book,  is  a  rubric  directing  that  "All  the  people  shall 
say,  Amen,  praise  Yah."  This  rubric  is  reproduced  at  the 
close  of  the  hymn  in  Chronicles  in  the  statement  immediately 
after  the  doxology,  "And  all  the  people  said.  Amen,  and 
Praise  Yahaweh." 

In  view  of  this  evidence  I  do  not  see  how  we  can  refuse 
to  admit  that  the  Chronicler  had  before  him  not  merely  a 
collection  of  psalms  containing  Psalms  xcvi.  and  cv.,  but  also 
the  fourth  book  of  psalms,  already  set  off  as  a  book  by  the 
addition  of  the  doxology  at  the  close  of  Psalm  cvi.  The 
evidence  of  the  Book  of  Chronicles  seems,  therefore,  to 
establish  the  fact  that  the  fourth  book  of  psalms  had  been 
set  off  as  such  as  early  as  the  year  b.c.  330.  If  my  former 
argument  is  correct,  this  would  show  that  the  third  book 
already  existed  with  the  same  number  of  psalms  as  the  fourth 
book ;  that  the  second  and  first  books  in  some  shape,  pre- 
sumably much  as  at  present,  were  already  in  existence ;  and 
that  there  was  a  fifth  book  of  some  sort,  from  which  the 
fourth  book  had  been  arbitrarily  set  off,  as  already  pointed 
out. 

What  were  the  limits  of  this  fifth  book  in  B.C.  330  ?     It  will 


GROWTH   OF   THE   PSALTER  167 

be  observed,  in  examining  the  composite  psalms  and  those 
that  contain  allusions  to  other  psalms,  that  the  quotations  and 
allusions  are  from  psalms  in  earlier  collections.  Now,  begin- 
ning with  Psalm  cxxxv.,  we  find  three  series  of  psalms,  many 
of  which  are  composite,  and  which  use  not  merely  psalms  of 
the  first  three  books  of  the  Psalter,  but  also  psalms  of  the 
fourth  book,  and  of  that  part  of  the  fifth  book  which  precedes 
them  in  order.  So  Psalm  cxxxv.  is  based  on  cxxxiv. ;  cxxxvi., 
which  rearranges  and  reuses  part  of  cxxxv.,  is  also  acquainted 
with  cxviii.  and  civ.  Psalm  cxlvii.  makes  use  of  civ. ;  and 
several  of  the  composite  psalms  of  this  and  the  immediately 
preceding  group,  if  not  directly  quoting,  are  yet  ordinarily 
regarded  by  commentators  as  evincing  an  acquaintance  with 
various  psalms  of  the  fourth  and  the  earlier  part  of  the  fifth 
books. 

First  Chronicles  xvi.  8-36  makes  use,  as  has  been  shown,  of 
Psalms  xcvi.,  cv.,  and  cvi. ;  and  2  Chronicles  vi.  40-42  cites 
cxxx.  and  cxxxii.,  members  of  that  collection  of  pilgrim  psalms 
which  closes  with  cxxxiv.  There  is  no  evidence  that  the 
Chronicler  was  acquainted  with  any  of  the  last  sixteen  psalms 
of  the  Psalter.  I  venture  therefore  to  affirm,  in  the  first 
place,  that  the  fifth  book  once  closed,  not  as  at  present  with 
Psalm  cl.,  but  with  Psalm  cxxxiv.,  which  will  be  seen  to  have 
been  an  appropriate  doxology;  and  that  the  addition  of  the 
last  sixteen  psalms  was  of  later  date.  The  language  of  some 
of  these  psalms,  like  cxxxix.,  which  is  almost  a  patois,  and 
could  have  been  accepted  for  Temple  use  only  at  a  time  when 
Hebrew  was  a  dead  or  dying  language,  suggests  a  very  late 
date.  A  study  of  the  contents  of  the  group  to  which  this 
psalm  belongs,  cxxxviii.-cxliv.,  suggests  further  that  it  can  be 
most  appropriately  assigned  to  the  period  of  the  Antiochian 
oppression  and  the  beginning  of  the  Maccabaean  uprising. 
The  contents  of  the  "  Praise  Song  of  David,"  cxlv.-cl.,  on  the 
other  hand,  and  more  particularly  of  Psalm  cxlix.,  almost 
compel  us  to  assign  this  group  to  the  time  of  the  Maccabaean 
triumph.  We  may  perhaps  assume  with  Professor  Cheyne  a 
final  revision  of  the  Psalter  under  the  direction  of  Simon 


i68   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Maccabaeus,  and  the  formal  addition  at  that  period  of  Psalms 
cxxxv.-cxxxvii.,  and  the  two  collections  cxxxviii.-cxliv.  and 
cxlv.-cl.     With  this  the  Psalter  was  definitely  closed. 

Toward  the  middle  of  the  second  century  B.C.,  then,  the 
final  revision  of  the  Psalter  was  completed  and  the  last  sixteen 
psalms  were  added;  but  as  early  as  B.C.  330  five  books  of 
psalms,  ending  with  Psalm  cxxxiv.,  were  in  the  hands  of  the 
Levitical  singers,  and  used  in  the  service  of  the  Temple.  This 
does  not,  of  course,  show  us  how  long  before  B.C.  330  the 
collection  consisting  of  Psalms  xc.-cxxxiv.  was  made.  But 
from  the  contents  and  the  general  character  of  this  collection 
as  a  whole,  we  can  say  that  it  was  made  in  a  period  of  com- 
parative prosperity  and  peace,  and  long  enough  after  the 
adoption  of  the  Law  to  allow  for  the  growth  of  the  legal  idea, 
some  time  probably  between  B.C.  400  and  350. 

We  have  seen  that  there  was  a  considerable  interval  of  time 
and  growth  between  this  collection  and  the  collection  of  Psalms 
xlii.-lxxxix.,  constituting  Books  IL  and  IIL  We  have  also  seen 
that  the  Yahawistic  collection,  Ixxiv.-lxxxix.,  represents  the 
latest  elements  in  those  books,  and  belongs,  as  a  collection,  to 
the  editor  and  reviser  of  the  three  Elohistic  collections  which 
precede  it.  Two  of  these  psalms  are  peculiarly  composite. 
One  of  these  two,  Ixxxix.,  is  historical,  and  treats  of  a  period 
covered  by  both  Samuel  and  Chronicles.  As  was  to  be  ex- 
pected from  what  has  been  already  said,  the  author  uses 
Samuel  only,  and  shows  no  knowledge  of  Chronicles.  The 
other,  Ixxxvi.,  quotes  twice  directly  from  the  Pentateuch,  both 
times  from  the  ancient  Yahawistic  document.  This  might,  of 
course,  be  accidental,  but  it  supports  the  argument  suggested 
by  the  necessity  of  placing  between  the  third  and  fourth  books 
a  considerable  interval,  and  an  interval  involving  considerable 
change,  that  this  collection  was  made  before  the  promulgation 
of  the  Law  by  Ezra  and  Nehemiah.  Analysing  the  contents 
of  these  six  psalms,  I  think  we  must  say  that  as  a  collection 
they  are  post-Exilic,  but  that  they  represent  also  a  period  of 
distress  and  humiliation.  So  Psalm  Ixxxiv.  is  a  pilgrim  psalm. 
Psalm  Ixxxv.  speaks  of  the  return  from  Exile  as  an  accomplished 


GROWTH   OF   THE   PSALTER  169 

fact,  but  complains  that  God's  indignation  against  His  people 
is  still  felt.  It  represents  the  general  feeling  of  the  first  post- 
Exilic  century,  with  which  we  are  familiar  from  Ezra,  Nehemiah, 
and  the  post-Exilic  prophets.  Psalms  Ixxxvi.,  Ixxxviii.,  and 
Ixxxix.,  would,  perhaps,  have  applied  equally  well  to  the  Exilic 
period;  but  in  consideration  of  Nehemiah's  prayer  (Neh.  i. 
5-1 1 )  and  the  general  representations  of  the  books  of  Ezra  and 
Nehemiah,  they  certainly  may  be  regarded  as  not  inapplicable 
to  the  period  of  relapse  succeeding  the  rebuilding  of  the 
Temple  and  preceding  the  coming  of  Nehemiah  as  governor. 
Roughly  we  might  date  them  as  a  collection  between  B.C.  500 
and  450,  and  in  dating  them  we  date  the  collection  of  psalms 
now  forming  Books  II.  and  III. 

But  each  of  the  other  three  collections  in  those  books  was 
collected  by  itself  before  they  were  all  collected  together  and 
re-edited  by  the  compilers  of  the  collection  Ixxxi v. -Ixxxix., 
and  each  of  these  collections  was  itself  earlier  than  the  final 
collection,  which  I  have  dated  B.C.  500-450.  These  three 
collections  are  all  distinguished,  as  previously  noticed,  by  a 
peculiar  use  of  Elohim  as  the  personal  name  of  God.  It  has 
often  been  assumed  that  this  is  due  to  the  editors,  and  that 
the  appearance  of  "Yahaweh"  in  a  few  cases  represents  the 
original  use  which  a  later  editor  sought  somewhat  care- 
lessly to  obliterate.  I  think  that  it  is  susceptible  of  demon- 
stration that  in  most  cases  Yahaweh  is  a  later  addition,  due 
to  a  Yahawistic  revision  of  Elohistic  psalms.  While  there  may 
be  a  couple  of  cases  in  which  our  present  Elohistic  are  re- 
censions of  earlier  Yahawistic  psalms,  there  seems  to  be  no 
more  ground  for  regarding  these  three  collections  as  a  whole 
as  an  Elohistic  revision  of  Yahawistic  psalms  than  for  regarding 
the  Elohistic  portions  of  the  Hexateuch  as  recensions  of  earlier 
Yahawistic  documents. 

It  has  also  been  assumed  that  the  use  of  Elohim  as  the 
personal  name  of  God  is  late.  This  assumption  has  absolutely 
no  ground  on  which  to  stand.  Elohim  instead  of  Yahaweh 
was  used  in  the  early-north-Israelite  Elohistic  code  in  the 
Hexateuch.     It  was  used  in  the  priest  code  in  Genesis  and 


I70  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

the  first  chapters  of  Exodus  to  represent  the  primitive, 
patriarchal  beUef  as  opposed  to  the  Mosaic  revelation.  Out- 
side of  this  it  is  almost  never  used.  But  in  the  later  books, 
and  noticeably  in  Ecclesiastes,  we  do  encounter  a  very  different 
use — that  of  ha-Elohif7i^  "  the  God,"  which  should  not  be  con- 
fused with  the  use  of  Elohim  as  a  proper  name.  The  Elohistic 
psalms  and  the  Elohistic  document  of  the  Hexateuch  stand 
together  in  this  latter  use,  which  evidently  never  became 
prevalent.  It  may  be  compared,  perhaps,  with  the  pre- 
Mohammedan  movement  towards  monotheism  at  Mecca  by 
the  use  of  Allah  as  the  name  of  Deity.  But  among  the 
Hebrews  the  monotheistic  movement  ultimately  assumed 
another  form,  emphasising  Yahaweh  as  Israel's  God,  and 
then  as  the  only  God,  until  the  name  became  too  sacred  for 
utterance,  and  Adonai  was  substituted  in  its  stead.  We  have 
in  the  use  of  Elohim  in  the  middle  books  of  the  Psalter,  as  in 
the  Elohistic  document  of  the  Hexateuch,  interesting  evidence 
of  a  movement  towards  monotheism  on  what  at  first  sight 
look  like  more  universal  lines,  by  the  elimination  of  national 
or  peculiar  names  for  the  Deity;  and  the  treatment  of  the 
name  in  the  priest  code  might  suggest  that  this  movement 
could  or  did  make  a  claim  of  primitive  use.  But  however 
that  may  be,  so  far  from  the  use  of  Elohim  being  a  mark  of 
late  date,  the  opposite  could  more  readily  be  maintained.  For 
our  purposes  we  may  regard  it  as  a  neutral  fact.  In  many  in- 
teresting particulars  we  might  compare  the  first  book  of  the 
Psalter  with  the  ancient  Yahawistic  document  of  the  Pentateuch, 
the  Elohistic  portions  of  the  second  and  third  books  with  the 
Elohistic  document,  and  the  fourth  and  fifth  books  with  the 
later  priest  code. 

Turning  to  the  general  contents  of  the  collections,  one  cannot 
but  be  impressed  with  the  fact  that  the  "Prayers  of  David"  is, 
above  all  the  collections  of  the  Psalter  (except  possibly  that 
collection  cxxxviii.-cxliv.,  which  we  have  referred  to  the  period 
of  the  Antiochian  oppression),  the  Psalter  of  agony  and  struggle. 
Psalms  li.-lx.  are  one  great  cry  of  pain  and  affliction,  and, 
though  Ixi.-lxiv.  show  a  slight  relief,  they  also  represent  a  con- 


GROWTH    OF   THE   PSALTER  171 

dition  of  national  calamity.  One  of  these  psalms,  Ixi.,  refers 
to  a  king  as  the  national  ruler  j  more  of  them,  like  the  close 
of  li.,  refer  distinctly  to  Exilic  conditions;  Ixv.-lxviii.  are  litur- 
gical hymns  of  a  joyous  character ;  and  Ixvi.  and  Ixviii.  seem 
to  celebrate  the  dehverance  from  Babylonian  exile  in  some- 
what the  strain  suggested  in  Isaiah  xi.  and  xii.,  and  applied  so 
freely  in  Deutero-Isaiah,  namely,  as  a  repetition  of  the  deliver- 
ance from  Egypt.  1  Psalms  Ixix.-lxxi.  are  of  the  same  general 
nature  as  li.-lx.  Psalm  Ixxii.  is  an  ideal  picture  of  the 
Messianic  reign.  This  examination  of  the  contents  seems  to 
show  that  Psalms  H.-lxiv.  were  collected  during  the  Exile, 
although  one  or  two  may  have  been  composed  in  the  troub- 
lous tim.es  immediately  preceding.  To  this  first  collection 
were  added,  shortly  after  the  Exile,  seven  more  hymns,  four  of 
which  were  composed  at  the  close  of  the  Exile  in  that  same 
triumphant  spirit  which  marks  Deutero-Isaiah. 

Turning  to  the  Psalter  of  the  sons  of  Korah,  xhi.-xlix.,  we 
find  very  different  conditions.  Parts  only  of  two  psalms  indi- 
cate a  period  of  national  distress,  the  last  stanza  and  the 
refrains  of  Psalms  xlii.  and  xliii.,  and  the  second  part  of 
Psalm  xliv. ;  these,  as  we  have  already  seen,  were  the  work 
of  later  editors  and  adapters,  and  not  part  of  the  original 
poems.  Psalm  xlv.,  the  only  secular  poem  in  the  Psalter,  is 
a  royal  marriage  hymn,  and,  therefore,  naturally  joyful ;  and 
Psalms  xlvi.-xlviii.,  Uke  the  first  part  of  xliv.,  are  triumph 
songs.  Psalm  xlix.  is  a  contemplation  of  the  riddle  of  life, 
in  thought  and  language  akin  to  the  Wisdom  literature.  It 
is  worthy  of  note  that  linguistically  the  Psalter  of  Korah  stands 
by  itself,  finding  its  closest  affinities  probably  with  the  psalms 
of  Asaph.  This  must  have  been  noticed,  I  think,  by  every  one 
who  has  undertaken  to  analyse  and  tabulate  the  use  of  words 

1  Psalm  Ixviii.  seems  to  me  to  be  composed  of  two  parts.  The  earlier, 
which  begins  with  the  raising  of  the  ark  (Num.  x.  35)  and  closes  with  its 
resting  (Num.  x.  36),  consists  of  verses  2-19,  to  which  was  given  as  a 
doxology  verse  20.  At  a  very  much  later  date  the  remainder  of  the  present 
psalm  was  added.  It  is  to  the  original  psalm  that  the  above  statement 
has  reference.     The  text  of  both  parts  is  corrupt. 


172   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

in  the  Psalter.  From  the  standpoint  of  art  this  collection 
represents  the  most  finished  lyric  poetry  of  the  Bible,  although 
rot  the  most  forceful.  From  the  standpoint  of  spiritual  ex- 
perience it  falls  below  other  collections  which  are  poetically 
its  inferiors. 

Psalm  xlii.  of  this  collection  has  ordinarily  been  supposed 
to  be  the  lament  in  exile  of  a  Levite,  who  mourned  his  de- 
privation of  the  Temple  ceremonies.  Others  have  referred  it 
to  some  exile  of  a  later  date.  All  have  recognised  the  unmis- 
takable reference  of  the  words  {v.  7),  "from  the  land  of 
Jordan,  and  Hermonim,  from  Mount  Mizar,"  or  "from  the 
little  mountain,"  to  the  place  of  the  sources  of  the  Jordan, 
the  modern  Banias,  where  once  stood  the  Hebrew  temple  of 
Dan ;  many,  curious,  and  improbable,  are  the  hypotheses  in- 
vented to  account  for  the  presence  of  an  exile  at  this  spot. 
In  fact,  there  is  nothing  to  compel  us  to  assume  a  condition 
of  exile,  and  verse  5  would  naturally  suggest  a  very  different 
idea.  Accepting  our  present  Masoretic  Hebrew  text,  this  verse 
reads  literally :  "  These  things  I  would  call  to  mind,  and  pour 
out  upon  me  my  life,  that  I  am  wont  to  pass  over  in  the 
throng,  I  lead  (?)  them  to  the  house  of  God,  with  the  sound 
of  chant  and  praise-song,  a  multitude  making  haj^^ — that  is, 
a  feast  of  the  nature  of  Tabernacles  or  Passover,  involving 
a  pilgrimage  to  a  shrine.  Now  it  seems  to  me  that  the 
natural  interpretation  of  this  passage,  considering  the  allusion 
to  the  locality  of  the  Dan  temple  in  verse  7,  and  to  the 
gushing  forth  of  waters  from  the  abyss  beneath  the  earth 
in  verse  8,  is  that  it  refers  to  the  worship  of  the  old 
temple  of  Dan.  If  in  verse  7  we  correct  the  Masoretic 
pointing  from  the  Septuagint  Greek  text,  we  have  part  of 
a  song  appropriate  to  the  great  festival  of  Tabernacles 
as  celebrated  at  that  shrine.  There  is,  of  course,  nothing 
unlikely  in  such  borrowing  by  Jewish  poets  from  Israelitic 
sources,  as  is  shown  by  the  numerous  writings  of  the  northern 
kingdom  which  have  found  their  way  into  the  Bible.  Indeed, 
we  know  that  Israel  had  developed  a  true  literature  while 
Judah  still  lingered  in  literary  barbarism,  and  that  it  was  the 


GROWTH    OF   THE   PSALTER  173 

fall  of  Samaria  in  the  last  half  of  the  eighth  century  b.c, 
which,  working  on  Judah  as  the  fall  of  Constantinople  in  the 
fifteenth  century  a.d.  worked  on  Italy,  brought  about  a  literary 
renaissance,  a  religious  revival,  and  a  reformation.  In  the 
literature  of  the  northern  kingdom  which  was  thus  inherited 
and  appropriated  by  the  Jews,  we  should  naturally  expect  to 
find  some  of  the  psalmody  which  is  referred  to  in  Amos  v.  23. 
I  feel  little  hesitation  in  affirming  that  at  the  base  of  Psalm  xlii. 
we  have  a  specimen  of  that  poetry.  Psalm  xlv.  has  been 
referred  by  many,  perhaps  a  majority  of  modern  critics,  to 
Israelitic  sources,  and  with  justice.  The  first  two  stanzas  of 
Psalm  xlvi.  (2-7),  which  appear  to  constitute  the  more  original 
part  of  that  poem,  would  also  gain  in  force  if  they  could  be  re- 
ferred to  the  temple  at  Dan  rather  than  to  that  at  Jerusalem. 

Further  than  this,  in  the  Asaph  psalms,  which,  as  noticed, 
are  more  closely  allied  to  the  Korah  collection  than  any  other 
collection  in  the  Psalter,  we  find  a  curious  exaltation  of 
Joseph,  Ephraim,  and  Manasseh.  This  has  been  explained 
by  Professor  Cheyne  as  a  mark  of  late  date  and  of  reflection 
on  the  past.  It  certainly  seems  more  natural  to  refer  such 
allusions  as  those  contained  in  Psalm  Ixxx.  to  an  Israelite 
than  to  suppose  a  late  Jew  hypothetising  himself  into  the 
position  of  one  of  the  apostate  people  of  the  past,  and, 
ignoring  Judah  utterly,  crying  out  to  God  as  the  Shepherd  of 
Israel,  Who  had  led  Joseph  like  a  flock.  While  it  is  clear 
that  the  concluding  stanzas  of  Psalm  Ixxx.  are  later  than  the 
fall  of  Samaria,  it  certainly  seems  more  natural  to  refer  the 
first  stanza  to  an  Israelitic  origin.  So,  also,  Ixxxi.  seems  to 
have  been  originally  a  festival  hymn  from  the  same  source,  and 
the  latter  part  of  Ixxvii.  would  bear  similar  treatment.  If  we 
have  referred  Psalms  xlii.  and  xlvi.  to  the  temple  of  Dan, 
we  should  naturally  refer  these  psalms  to  the  great  Josephite 
temple  at  Bethel.^     Such  an  origin  of  psalms  lying  at  the 

^  Psalm  Ixxxix.  contains  a  passage  which  must  have  been  written  in 
Galilee,  namely,  verse  13,  where  Hermon  and  Tabor  are  used  as  synonyms 
of  north  and  south,  a  use  which  I  think  anyone  who  has  visited  the 
country  will  recognise  as  characteristically  Galilean,  and  psychologically 


174   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

base  of  these  two  collections  might  also,  in  view  of  the  use 
of  Elohim  found  in  the  north-Israelite  Elohistic  document  of 
the  Hexateuch,  give  some  clue  to  the  origin  of  the  school  in 
which  this  use  was  handed  down. 

It  must  be  understood,  however,  that,  as  we  now  have 
them,  these  old  Israelitic  hymns  have  been  worked  over  into 
Jewish  Temple  psalms,  and  that  not  all  the  hymns  of  either 
the  Korah  or  Asaph  collections  are  based  on  Israelitic 
originals.  Indeed,  Psalm  Ixxviii.  is  especially  concerned  to 
prove  that  God  has  cast  off  Joseph  and  chosen  Judah. 
From  the  fact  that  this  psalm  apparently  makes  use  only 
of  the  Yahawistic,  Elohistic,  and  Deuteronomistic  portions  of 
the  Hexateuch,  as  well  as  from  the  point  at  which  it  closes 
its  historical  retrospect,  it  would  seem  to  be  pre-Exilic.  That 
the  Psalter  of  Asaph,  as  a  collection,  is  not  pre-Exilic  is  mani- 
fest from  the  number  of  psalms  which  are  prayers  for  deliver- 
ance from  national  calamity,  six  out  of  thirteen  in  our  present 
arrangement.^ 

Even  the  first  book,  although  earlier  than  the  second  and 
third  books,  and  probably  earlier  in  the  main  than  the  indi- 
vidual collections  which  compose  those  books,  is  not,  as  a 
\  collection,  earlier  than  the  Exile,  as  is  shown  by  the  number  of 
psalms  which  presuppose  Exilic  conditions.     Out  of  forty-one 

impossible  for  anyone  but  a  Galilean.  If  written  by  a  Galilean,  it  must 
have  been  written  before  the  fall  of  Samaria.  The  psalm  as  we  have  it  is 
evidently  not  pre-Exilic,  but,  as  already  stated,  it  is  to  a  considerable  extent 
a  compilation,  and  this  verse,  with  others  immediately  before  and  after 
it,  the  compiler  seems  to  have  borrowed  or  adapted  from  an  old  song 
of  Israel. 

^  Psalms  Ixxiv.  and  Ixxix.,  both  of  which  occur  in  the  Psalter  of  Asaph, 
present  a  difficult  problem.  On  the  ground  of  their  position  in  the 
Psalter  it  seems,  as  Professor  Robertson  Smith  has  pointed  out,  almost 
impossible  to  refer  them  to  the  Maccaboean  period,  and  on  the  ground  of 
their  contents  it  seems  almost  impossible  to  refer  them  to  any  other  time. 
Is  the  difficulty  to  be  solved  by  supposing  them  to  be  older  psalms,  which 
were  remodelled  and  adapted  to  the  circumstances  of  the  Maccabaean 
revolt?  It  is  difficult,  also,  to  refer  verses  6-9  of  Psalm  Ixxxiii.  to  any 
other  than  the  Maccabcean  period,  whereas  the  rest  of  the  psalm,  which  is 
complete  without  verses  6-9,  could  equally  well  belong  to  an  earlier  date. 


GROWTH    OF   THE   PSALTER  175 

psalms,  which  constitute  the  book  in  its  present  shape,  fifteen 
whole  and  two  half  psalms  are  songs  of  affliction.  While 
national  calamity  is  not  so  clearly  stamped  upon  this  book 
as  it  is  upon  the  "Prayers  of  David"  in  the  second  book, 
there  are  yet  a  number  of  psalms  which  clearly  indicate 
Exilic  conditions,  such  as  xiv.,  xxii.,  xxxv.,  the  later  portions  of 
ix.  and  x.,  xxxviii.,  xxxix.,  and  xl.,  the  first  part  of  which 
recalls  forcibly  the  tone  and  language  of  Deutero  -  Isaiah. 
There  are  also  later  elements,  like  xix.  8-15,  which  clearly 
belongs  to  the  post-Ezra  legal  period,  and  xxxiii.,  which 
might  have  been  a  psalm  of  the  fourth  or  fifth  book ;  but 
these  seem  to  be  of  the  nature  of  additions  or  insertions, 
and  not  to  belong  to  that  editing  which  gave  this  book  its 
form  as  a  collection.  This  book  also  contains  earlier 
elements,  like  the  royal  hymns  xx.  and  xxi.,  and  perhaps 
the  greater  part  of  its  bulk  is  pre-Exilic.  In  it  are  to  be 
found  probably  the  most  forceful  poems  of  the  Psalter,  and 
those  containing  the  most  primitive  pictures  of  nature. 
Indeed,  I  should  say  that  the  first  part  of  Psalm  xviii.  had 
scarcely  emancipated  itself  from  the  worship  of  God  in  the 
phenomena  of  nature ;  while  Psalm  xxix.,  the  "  Song  of  Seven 
Thunders,"  certainly  conveys  a  vivid  impression  of  a  God  of 
the  storm. 

Space  forbids  me  to  enter  into  the  discussion  of  the  date  at 
which  Hebrew  psalmody  began,  or  of  the  relation  of  David  to 
that  psalmody.  But  I  may  say  that  in  my  judgment  the 
evidence  of  tradition  forces  us  to  assign  to  David  an  im- 
portant part  in  the  development  not  merely  of  secular,  but 
also  of  religious  lyric  poetry,  between  which  the  line  that  we 
now  draw  did  not  exist  in  the  earUer  times.^  On  the  other 
hand,  I  think  it  not  improbable  that  Davidic  psalms  have  been 
so  edited,  adapted,  added  to,  and  subtracted  from  in  the 
course  of  the  centuries,  that  it  is  doubtful  whether  we  can 
hope  ever  certainly  to  identify  his  handiwork. 

That  Hebrew  psalmody  began  at  an  early  age  is  also  rather 

^  Compare,  for  instance,  the  contents  of  the  hymns  of  the  Rigveda. 


176   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

indicated  by  what  we  know  of  Babylonian  psalmody,  both  as 
to  form  and  content.  There  is  sometimes  a  curious  identity 
of  technical  phraseology,  as  in  the  use  of  "how  long" 
in  both  Babylonian  and  Hebrew  penitential  psalms.  The 
'^  conception  of  sin,  including  "secret  sins,"  is  strikingly  alike 
in  both;  and  it  has  seemed  to  me  that,  in  the  very  ancient 
Babylonian  psalms,  we  sometimes  find  precisely  those  ideas 
which  have  been  subjectively  ascribed  in  the  Hebrew  Psalter 
to  the  later  period.  But  this  is  a  subject  which  yet  awaits 
treatment,  and  my  statements  are  perhaps  little  more  than 
guesses.^ 

The  failure  of  the  prophets  to  show  a  knowledge  of  the 
psalms,  which  has  been  urged  as  an  argument  for  the  non- 
existence of  psalmody  before  the  Exile,  seems  to  me  to  have 
been  much  exaggerated.  Jeremiah  was  evidently  familiar  with 
a  body  of  psalmody,  both  penitential  and  liturgical,  which 
in  general  character  was  similar  to  that  which  has  come  down 
to  us.  I  do  not  mean  that  he  quotes  certainly  from  any 
psalms  which  we  now  possess;  but  in  the  psalms  which  he 
himself  composes,  as  for  instance  in  chapter  xx.,  he  is  evidently 
using  a  familiar  model,  which  in  form  and  method  of  thought 
and  expression  is  identical  with  our  psalmody.  In  other 
places  he  uses  language  evidently  suggested  by  some  psalm 
which  in  tone  and  language  was  of  the  same  nature  as  many 
which  we  now  possess.  So  also  the  earlier  prophets,  from 
Amos  onward,  in  their  treatment  of  the  religious  lyric  make 
use   of  models   evidently   familiar,   and  by  doing  so  testify 

^  The  following  fragment  of  a  votive  psalm,  discovered  by  Professor 
'  Hilprecht  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania  on  a  glass  axe  made  in 
imitation  of  lapis  lazuli  and  dedicated  to  Bel  of  Nippur  by  Nazi-Maruttash, 
King  of  Babylon  in  the  fourteenth  pre-Christian  century  "for  his  life 
(soul),"  might  have  been  addressed  to  Yahaweh  by  a  pious  Hebrew  at  any 
period  covered  by  our  Psalms  : — 

*'  That  He  may  hear  his  prayer  ; 
Hearken  unto  his  desire  ; 
Accept  his  prayer ; 
Preserve  his  life  ; 
Make  long  his  days." 


GROWTH    OF   THE    PSALTER  177 

to  the  previous  existence  of  lyrical  religious  poetry  used  for 
purposes  of  psalmody.  That  no  collections  of  pre-Exilic 
psalmody  have  come  down  to  us,  at  least  in  their  original 
form,  is  probably  true ;  for  psalmody  seems  to  have  had  much 
the  same  history  as  ritual  legislation.  Antique  in  fact,  it  was 
remodelled  in  and  after  the  Exile,  and  has  not  been  preserved 
to  us  as  a  whole.  The  current  method  of  criticism  of  the 
Psalter,  which  fails  to  recognise  the  older  elements  in  the 
psalms  because  it  dates  them  entire  by  their  latest  elements 
only,  is  as  unscientific  as  it  would  be  to  date  every  portion 
of  the  Hexateuch  on  the  evidence  of  the  latest  additions  to 
the  priest  code. 

This  statement  of  the  general  problem  of  the  Psalter  is, 
naturally,  very  imperfect,  and  much  which  it  would  be  desirable 
to  consider  has  been  of  necessity  passed  over.  My  object  has 
been  to  suggest  a  line  of  analysis  which  shall  depend,  in  the 
first  instance,  on  objective  data  rather  than  on  subjective 
criteria,  which  all  men  see  differently.  Commencing  from  the 
end  and  going  backward,  I  have  outlined  an  evolution  which 
follows  in  general  the  present  arrangement  of  the  Psalter, 
from  the  first  book,  of  Exilic  date,  but  resting  on  earlier 
pre-Exilic  material,  down  to  the  final  Maccabsean  additions 
to  the  fifth  book  of  the  Psalter.  According  to  this  analysis 
we  may,  roughly  speaking,  look  for  the  earliest  psalms  in  the 
first  collection  of  the  first  book,  and  for  the  latest  in  the  last 
collection. 

A  study  of  the  language,  the  form  of  the  poetry,  the 
figures,  and  the  subjects  of  thought  will,  I  think,  support  this 
hypothesis,  but  all  these  criteria  except  the  first  are  danger- 
ously subjective ;  and  the  test  of  language  is  beset  with  certain 
difficulties  which  make  its  application  here  doubtful.  In  their 
stead  I  would  offer  the  results  of  ja  few  analyses  of  the  Psalter 
of  a  different  nature,  furnishing  tests  of  a  somewhat  more 
objective  character,  which  strikingly  confirm  the  evidence, 
from  heading,  arrangement,  etc.,  presented  above.  First  let 
me  reiterate  the  evidence  from  the  general  tone  and  contents 
of  each  collection.     The  contents  of  the  first  book  are  more 

N 


178   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

varied  than  those  of  any  book,  suggesting  a  greater  range 
in  time,  and  a  broader,  less  ecclesiastical  life.  A  majority 
of  the  psalms  of  this  book  are  joyful  or  indifferent ;  but  a  large 
minority,  including  re-edited  forms  of  originally  joyful  psalms, 
express  a  sense  of  calamity,  whether  personal  or  national, 
and  some  of  these  make  specific  allusion  to  conditions  of 
exile. 

The  contents  of  the  Korah  Psalter  are  in  general  happy  or 
triumphant  in  tone ;  but  re-edited  forms  of  two  of  the  psalms 
indicate  a  period  of  national  distress,  and  the  closing  psalm 
of  the  collection  deals  with  the  general  question  of  calamity. 

Almost  one-half  (six  out  of  thirteen  psalms)  of  the  Psalter 
of  Asaph  is  composed  of  psalms  of  distress,  of  which  two 
specifically  mention  the  Exile,  while  two  represent  a  condition 
of  religious  persecution.  The  other  psalms  of  this  collection 
are  either  philosophical  discussions  of  the  problem  of  life,  or 
poems  of  the  triumphant  judgments  of  God. 

Of  the  "Prayers  of  David,"  seventeen  out  of  twenty-two 
represent  a  condition  of  distress,  oppression,  and  conflict,  and 
some  allude  specifically  to  exile.  The  remaining  five  psalms 
at  the  close  of  the  collection  are  joyful,  and  four  of  these,  of 
a  liturgical  character,  contain  allusions  to  the  Exile  as  a  thing 
past. 

Psalms  Ixxxiv.-lxxxix.,  largely  unoriginal  or  compiled,  con- 
tain four  psalms  of  distress;  and  one  of  them  (Ixxxviii.)  is 
the  only  utterly  hopeless  psalm  of  the  Psalter.  Of  these  four 
psalms,  one  describes  the  conditions  of  the  Exile;  another 
refers  to  the  Exile  as  past,  but  depicts  a  condition  of  hope 
unfulfilled.  Of  the  remaining  psalms  of  this  collection,  one 
is  a  sweet  Temple  song,  and  the  other  a  p?ean  of  the  triumph 
of  Jerusalem  over  the  natior.s  through  Divine  power. 

The  psalms  of  Books  IV.  and  V.,  as  far  as  cxxxiv.,  are, 
almost  without  exception,  joyful.  They  are,  to  a  considerable 
extent,  liturgical;  they  display  comparatively  little  variety  of 
circumstance ;  and  they  have  an  ecclesiastical  tone  quite  in 
contrast  to  the  first  book. 

In  the  small  collection,  cxxxviii.-cxliv.,  five  psalms,  all  but 


GROWTH   OF   THE   PSALTER  179 

the  first  and  the  last,  are  a  cry  for  deliverance  from  enemies 
on  every  side,  and  even  cxxxviii.  and  cxliv.  are  hymns  of 
conflict.     There  is  much  compilation  in  some  of  these  psalms. 

The  "Praise  Song  of  David"  (cxlv.-cl.)  is  one  paean  of 
triumph. 

Analysing  the  references  to  sacrifice  or  matters  pertaining 
to  sacrifice  in  the  Psalter,  we  find  in  the  first  book  sacrifice 
assumed  without  question,  except  in  Psalm  xl,  and  the  simple, 
joyful  side  presented.  Here,  also,  we  find  the  king  the 
sacrificer  of  the  nation,  and  his  sacrifices  (xx.  4)  are  urged 
on  Yahaweh  as  a  ground  for  giving  the  nation  help  and 
victory.  But  in  Psalm  xl.  we  meet  the  prophetic  protest 
against  the  childish,  sacrificial  view  of  religion.  This  view  is 
emphasised  more  strongly  in  the  second  book,  where  one  of 
the  Asaphite  psalms  (1.)  and  two  of  the  "Prayers  of  David" 
(li.  and  Ixix.)  assert  most  strongly  the  anti-sacrificial  views  of 
the  prophetic  school.  On  the  other  hand,  li.  is  furnished  with 
a  sacrificial  appendix;  and  in  the  same  collection  (Ivi.  13)  we 
find  the  most  anthropomorphic  reference  to  sacrifice,  as  some- 
thing pleasing  God  by  its  savour,  in  the  whole  Psalter.  In 
the  fourth  and  fifth  books  there  is  almost  no  mention  of 
sacrifice  (in  cxviii.  27,  "bind  the  sacrifice"  is  a  rubrical 
direction,  and  not  a  part  of  the  psalm).  On  the  other  hand, 
Aaron,  the  priests,  and  the  Levites,  who  had  not  been 
mentioned  in  the  first  three  books,  come  to  the  front  in  the 
fifth  book.  Judging  from  these  references,  we  might  say  that 
the  first  book  represents  the  more  primitive  conception  of 
religion,  and  regards  sacrifice  as  a  thing  in  itself  pleasing  to 
God.  Just  at  the  close  of  this  book  we  find  an  echo  of  the 
prophetic  reformation;  while  Books  II.  and  III.  as  a  whole, 
but  more  particularly  the  "Prayers  of  David,"  represent  the 
period  of  storm  and  stress,  containing  both  the  most  vehement 
denunciations  of  the  sacrificial  idea,  and  also  the  most  anthro- 
pomorphic picture  of  sacrifice.  Now  this  battle,  as  we  learn 
from  the  prophets,  began  with  Isaiah,  reached  its  full  develop- 
ment with  Jeremiah,  and  ended  with  the  close  of  the  Exilic 
period.     The  final  edition  of  the  "  Prayers  of  David  "  repre- 


i8o   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

sents  the  outcome  of  this  struggle,  not  the  abolition  of 
sacrifice,  but  that  mystical  treatment  of  it  which  rendered 
possible  the  addition  of  those  closing  verses  to  Psalm  li. 
But  this  spiritualisation  of  sacrifice  reached  a  further  develop- 
ment, which  is  shown  in  the  last  books  of  the  Psalter,  where 
we  find  it  clearly  not  banished,  but  removed,  as  it  were,  from 
the  everyday  life  of  the  people  into  an  inner  court,  and  where 
this  side  of  religion  has  become  the  function  of  a  holy  priest- 
hood carefully  organised  and  set  apart,  who  are  the  leaders 
and  representatives  of  the  congregation. 

Similarly  it  is  in  the  fourth  and  fifth  books  only,  leaving  out 
of  consideration  the  late  first  psalm  and  the  second  half  of 
Psalm  xix.,  that  we  find  that  exaltation  and  glorification  of  the 
Law  which  became  so  marked  a  feature  in  the  Jewish  religion 
after  the  time  of  Ezra. 

An  analysis  of  mythological  references  in  the  Psalter,  an- 
thropomorphisms in  the  representations  of  the  nature  and 
dealings  of  God,  allusions  to  angels,  survivals  of  polytheism, 
and  the  like,  gives  the  same  result  of  a  development  according 
to  the  arrangement  of  the  Psalter  as  we  now  have  it,  and 
particularly  of  a  distinct  cleavage  between  the  fourth  and  fifth 
books  and  the  remainder  of  the  Psalter.  It  is  in  Psalm  Ixxxvi. 
that  we  first  find  the  clear  statement,  "  Thou  art  God  alone  " 
(v.  lo);  while  in  the  last  books  we  find  the  expression  of  that 
idea  represented  much  earlier  by  the  prophets,  that  the  gods 
of  the  heathen  are  "not  gods"  (xcvi.  4,  5  ;  cvi.  28).  In  the 
earlier  books,  on  the  other  hand  (and  there  are  survivals  of 
this  belief,  in  statement  at  least,  in  the  last  books),  while 
Yahaweh  or  Elohim  is  recognised  as  the  God  of  Israel,  the 
true  God,  and  the  great  God,  the  psalmist  is  never  able 
entirely  to  rid  himself  of  the  idea  that  the  other  gods  have 
an  actual  existence.  It  is  not  until  the  fourth  and  fifth  books, 
also,  that  we  find  those  exalted  conceptions  of  creation, 
God's  relation  vo  nature  and  His  omniscience,  which  in  the 
Hexateuch  charat^terise  the  priest  code  in  distinction  from  the 
Yahawistic  and  Elohistic  writers  (compare,  for  instance,  Psalms 
civ.  and  cxxxix.  wi  >  >;viii.,  xxix.,  Ixxvii.  17-30,  Ixxx.  2-4). 


GROWTH   OF   THE   PSALTER  i8i 

In  the  first  book  we  find  the  "angel  of  Yahaweh"  (xxxiv.  7 ; 
XXXV.  6,  7),  as  in  the  Yahawistic  document  of  the  Hexateuch ; 
in  the  last  books  of  the  Psalter  we  find  something  of  that 
heavenly  hierarchy  which  was  developed  so  fully  in  later 
Judaism,  the  angels,  hosts,  and  ministers  (xci.  n  ;  ciii.  19-21 ; 
cxlviii.  2,  etc.).  With  the  growing  perception  of  the  infinite- 
ness  and  superhumanity  of  God,  He  was  removed  farther  and 
farther  from  contact  with  the  human.  Such  primitive  ideas 
and  expressions  as  "see  the  face  of  God"  (xlii.  3),  "sons 
of  God  "  (xxix.  2  ;  Ixxxix.  7),  and  the  like,  became  impossible. 
God  was  represented  as  acting,  in  the  more  common  and 
mechanical  view,  through  superhuman  beings — the  hosts  of 
heaven,  angels,  and  ministers;  in  the  more  spiritual  view, 
by  a  breath,  a  word,  a  command  (Genesis  i.  ;  Psalm  civ.  7). 
This  led  ultimately  to  the  hypostasising  of  the  commandment 
or  word  of  God,  of  which  we  find  a  trace  in  a  late  Maccabaean 
psalm  (cxlvii.  15). 

The  treatment  of  the  question  of  the  future  life  in  the 
psalms  seems  at  first  sight  to  contradict  what  I  have  said 
about  a  development  in  the  Psalter  from  beginning  to  end. 
A  considerable  number  of  psalms  in  the  first  book,  fifteen  out 
of  the  thirty-seven  Davidic  psalms,  treat  of  or  refer  to  death 
and  the  after-state ;  and  of  these,  three — xvi.,  xvii.,  and  xxxvi. 
— are  regarded  by  Professor  Cheyne  as  showing  a  hope  of,  if 
not  a  belief  in,  personal  immortaUty.  In  the  Korahite  Psalter 
he  finds  future  hope  in  xlix.,  in  the  "Prayers  of  David"  in  Ixiii. 
(why  not  also  in  Ixix.  ?),  and  in  the  Psalter  of  Asaph  in  Ixxiii. 
Later  than  this  in  the  Psalter  even  he  finds  no  glimmer  of 
such  a  hope.  The  theory  of  the  fourth  and  fifth  books  is  very 
distinctly  that  with  death  existence  ceases,  and  that  the  bless- 
ings of  God  and  the  rewards  of  good  and  evil  are  to  be 
expected  here.  In  the  earlier  books,  even  including  the 
Yahawistic  collection  which  closes  the  third  book,  there  seems 
to  be  ever  and  anon  a  restlessness  under  these  conditions,  a 
complaint  against  them,  and  a  desperate  search  for  a  way  out 
of  death.  But  in  the  fourth  and  fifth  books  they  are  accepted 
and  acquiesced  in,  and   the  theory  of  the   satisfaction  and 


i82   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

reward  of  religion  and  righteousness  in  this  life  appears  to 
be  regarded  as  sufficient.  Only,  possibly,  in  the  collection 
cxxxviii.-cxliv.  do  we  see  some  faint  revival  of  the  protests  of 
the  earlier  collections.  This  looks  at  first  sight  like  a  re- 
trogression, and  in  the  line  of  spiritual  development  I  suppose 
we  must  so  regard  it.  Historically  considered,  however,  it 
accords  with  the  known  history  of  religious  thought  among 
the  Jews.  The  last  two  books  of  the  Psalter,  as  already 
pointed  out,  belong  to  the  Temple  and  the  priesthood  in  a 
sense  in  which  the  other  books  do  not.  They  are  peculiarly 
tinged  with  priestly  views.  Now  when  in  the  second  century 
B.C.  we  find  the  division  between  Pharisee  and  Sadducee  an 
accomplished  fact,  it  is  the  priestly  aristocracy  which  con- 
stitutes the  essence  of  the  Sadducean  party.  The  Sadducees 
were  the  conservatives,  who  maintained  the  older  views — 
views  which  had  been  expressed  by  the  authors  of  Job 
xxxii.-xxxvii.,  of  Ecclesiastes,  and  Ecclesiasticus.  It  is  to 
them,  also,  that  we  owe  the  first  Book  of  Maccabees.  The 
evidence  of  the  Psalter  is  only  what  we  might  have  expected 
from  a  consideration  of  the  history  of  the  times.  The  last 
two  books  of  the  Psalter  belong  to  the  period  of  the  spiritual 
predominance  of  a  priestly  aristocracy,  which,  when  the 
Pharisees  developed  into  a  party,  became  the  Sadducees. 
The  development  of  the  Pharisees  as  a  party,  and  with  them 
the  revival  of  discredited  (cf.  Zechariah  xiii.  3-6)  prophetic 
tendencies  in  the  apocalyptic  literature  beginning  with  Daniel, 
was  a  result  of  the  Antiochian  oppression  and  the  Maccabaean 
revolt.  The  idea  of  personal  immortality  springs  into  life  in 
this  literature. 

Professor  Cheyne  has  argued  that  the  Jewish  hope  of  im- 
mortality was  due  to  Persian  influences.  An  analysis  of  the 
references  to  death  and  the  after-state,  in  the  Psalter  and  in 
the  Book  of  Job  also,  suggests  the  development  of  the  hope 
of  personal  immortality  out  of  the  belief  in  family  and  national 
immortality.  The  discussion  of  the  question  of  death  belongs 
especially  to  periods  of  national  calamity ;  and  the  glimmer  of 
personal  hope  in  the  Psalms  referred  to,  if  it  exists  at  all, 


GROWTH   OF  THE   PSALTER  183 

which  I  hardly  believe,  comes  from  the  application  to  the 
individual  of  the  consoling  hope  of  national  revival  or  con- 
tinuance of  life  by  posterity,  which  we  find  animating  the 
prophets  in  the  midst  of  apparent  national  death  (cf.  Ezekiel 
xxxvii.,    Isaiah   liii.    10),   and   which   clearly   appears   in   the 
Psalms  in  such  passages  as  xxii.  30-32,  ix.   13,  14,  17,  and 
others.     It  was  the  Antiochian  oppression,  followed  by  the 
successful    national    uprising    under    the    Maccabees,   falling 
at   a   time  when,  thanks  to   the   Law   and   the   synagogues, 
individual  ideas  of  rehgion  had  begun  to  be  developed,  which 
finally  converted  a  national  into  a  personal  belief.     Persian 
influence,  if  it  existed  and  helped  to  quicken  this  belief,  did 
so    through    that   discredited   prophetic   line   which,   after   a 
period  of  dormancy,  developed  in  a  new  form  in  Daniel  and 
the  Apocalypse,  rather  than  through  the  psalmists. 

Other  analyses  of  a  similar  character  seem  to  me  to  support 
that  general  view  of  the  growth  of  the  Psalter  which  I  have 
already  presented,  and  to  confirm  the  dates  which  I  have 
suggested  for  the  various  books  and  collections  of  the  Psalter. 
As  far  as  dates  are  concerned,  the  psalms  should  be  grouped 
according  to  the  evidence  of  the  headings  and  their  arrange- 
ment in  the  Psalter.  Each  individual  psalm  should  be  analysed 
to  show  its  growth  and  editing,  and  the  distinction  carefully 
made  between  late  psalms  and  early  psalms  re-edited  by  later 
hands. 


CHAPTER  IX 
PSALM   HEADINGS 

ALL  who  read  the  Psahns  in  the  Bible,  whether  in  the 
King  James  or  the  Canterbury  Version,  are  impressed 
and  mystified  by  the  curious  headings.  Turn,  for  instance,  to 
Psalm  Ivii.  in  the  King  James  Version,  and  you  find  this 
heading :  "  To  the  chief  Musician,  Al-taschith,  Michtam  of 
David."  In  the  marginal  note  you  find  the  Hebrew  words 
Al-iaschith  and  Michtam  rendered,  the  former,  Destroy  ftot,  and 
the  latter,  A  goldeti  Psalm.  At  first  sight  the  words  Destroy  not 
seem  to  make  no  sense,  and  you  are  inclined  to  say  that  the 
translator  must  be  mistaken ;  but  if  you  will  turn  to  Isaiah 
Ixv.  8,  you  will  find  such  an  explanation  of  the  words  as  proves 
that  there  is  no  mistake,  and  that  the  words  possess  an 
intelligible  sense.  There  a  reference  is  made  to  the  popular 
vintage  song  that  is  sung  regularly  by  the  people  when  they 
pick  the  clusters  of  the  grapes ;  when  the  new  wine  is  found 
in  the  cluster,  then  they  sing,  "  Destroy  it  not,  for  a  blessing  is 
in  it." 

The  words  Al-taschith,  or  "  Destroy  it  not,"  which  are  placed 
at  the  head  of  this  psalm  are  a  liturgical  direction,  specifying 
a  particular  use  for  the  psalm,  namely,  that  it  is  to  be  sung  at 
vintage.  There  are  four  psalms  in  all  specified  for  this  use 
by  the  same  heading,  Al-taschith,  "  Destroy  not,"  namely. 
Psalms  Ivii.,  Iviii.,  lix.,  and  Ixxv.  Not  that  these  psalms 
were  written  originally  as  vintage  songs,  but  that  they  were 
designated  at  a  certain  period,  in  the  arrangement  of  the 
Psalter  for  hturgical  purposes,  to  be  sung  at  the  vintage. 

Three  other  Psalms,  viii.,  Ixxxi.,  and  Ixxxiv.,  are  designated 

184 


PSALM    HEADINGS  185 

by  their  heading  ("upon  Gittith")  to  be  sung  at  the  treading  out 
of  the  grapes — wine-press  songs,  as  the  Greeks  called  their 
similar  hymns.  One  of  these  Greek  wine-press  songs,  by 
Anacreon,  which  lies  before  me  as  I  write,  reads  as  follows  : — 

"Only  men  tread  the  vine,  setting  free  the  wine. 
Loudly  praising  God  with  wine-press  songs." 

That  it  was  customary  for  the  Jews  to  sing  such  songs  we 
learn  from  the  writings  of  contemporary  prophets.  So  in 
Isaiah  xvi.  10  we  read:  "In  the  vineyards  there  shall  be  no 
singing,  neither  joyful  noise ;  no  treaders  shall  tread  out  wine 
in  the  presses ;  the  shout  I  have  made  to  cease."  And 
Jeremiah  xxv.  30  reads,  "Yahaweh  shall  roar  from  on  high, 
and  utter  His  voice  from  His  holy  habitation ;  He  shall 
mightily  roar  against  His  foes ;  He  shall  give  a  shout  as  they 
that  tread  the  grapes." 

Reading  these  seven  psalms,  which  are  designated  as 
psalms  for  the  vintage  and  for  the  treading  of  the  grapes,  we  find 
that  there  is  not  the  slightest  reference  in  the  psalms  them- 
selves either  to  the  vintage  or  to  the  treading  of  the  presses. 
We  do  not  know  at  what  time  these  headings  were  prefixed  to 
the  psalms,  but  the  style  of  them  should  be  sufficient  to 
convince  anyone  that  it  was  done  at  an  intensely  pietistic 
period,  when  the  life  of  the  people  was  becoming  more  and 
more  absorbed  in  its  religion.  The  religious  leaders  of  the 
people  were  even  endeavouring  to  drive  out  profane,  that  is 
secular,  songs  and  hymns,  providing  the  people  with  spiritual 
songs  and  hymns  to  sing  on  all  occasions.  Study  the  four 
psalms  which  are  appointed  for  the  vintage  psalms,  that  is, 
the  four  "Destroy  not"  psalms,  and  you  will  be  puzzled  to 
ascertain  any  principle  on  which  the  director  of  the  liturgy 
assigned  these  particular  hymns  for  this  purpose.  They  are 
not  even  joyous  in  character.  The  three  hymns  headed 
"For  the  pressing  of  the  Grapes" — for  I  suppose  that  we 
should  translate  in  this  manner  the  words  "set  to  Gittith,"  or 
"upon  Gittith,"  which  are  the  translations  given  in  the 
Revised  and  King  James  Versions,  respectively— are,  however, 


i86   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

joyful  songs.  The  first  of  them,  Psalm  viii.,  is  one  of  the 
beautiful  nature  hymns  of  the  Psalter;  Psalm  Ixxxi.  com- 
mences joyfully  and  ends  with  a  beautiful  promise ;  and 
Psalm  Ixxxiv.  is  beautiful  and  amiable  throughout.  Neverthe- 
less, there  is  nothing  in  any  of  them  which  has  any  reference 
to  the  treading  of  grapes.  They  were  not  composed  with  the 
vintage  in  mind,  and  were  merely  assigned  to  that  use  by  the 
liturgical  directors,  when  they  undertook  out  of  the  Temple 
Psalm  Book  to  provide  the  people  with  hymns  for  all 
occasions. 

Two  psalms  (xxxviii.  and  Ixx.)  are  designated  by  their  head- 
ings for  a  particular  sacrificial  rite.  In  our  Authorised  Bibles 
these  psalms  are  headed,  "  to  bring  to  remembrance."  In  the 
Revised  Version  there  is  a  note,  "to  make  memorial."  The 
translation  should  be,  "to  make  the  azkara^^  or  memorial 
offering,  which  is  described  in  Leviticus  xxiv.  7,  8  :  "And  thou 
shalt  put  pure  frankincense  upon  each  row,  that  it  may  be 
on  the  bread  for  a  memorial  (azkard)^  even  an  offering  made 
by  fire  unto  Yahaweh.  Every  Sabbath  he  shall  set  it  in  order 
before  Yahaweh  continually."  Every  Sabbath  the  shewbread 
was  renewed,  and  every  Sabbath  the  azkara,  or  memorial,  was 
offered.  In  the  liturgical  arrangement  of  the  Psalter,  as 
indicated  by  the  headings  which  have  come  down  to  us, 
it  was  directed  that  one  or  the  other  of  these  two  psalms, 
xxxviii.  or  Ixx.,  should  be  sung.  If  you  will  turn  to  them,  you 
will  notice  that  Psalm  xxxviii.  is  distinctly  of  a  penitential 
character;  Psalm  Ixx.  is  briefer  and  more  joyful.  It  seems 
as  though  the  intention  were  to  allow  the  use  of  one  or  the 
"other,  according  to  the  different  seasons  or  the  different 
circumstances,  just  as  alternative  chants  are  provided  in  our 
ritual,  one  being  used  where  a  more  penitential  tone  was 
required,  and  the  other  under  ordinary  circumstances. 

Psalm  c,  which  is  very  familiar  to  every  Churchman,  from 
its  constant  use  in  our  services,  was  also  appointed  to  be 
used  for  a  special  liturgical  purpose.  In  the  King  James 
Version  it  is  designated  as  "A  Psalm  of  praise,"  and  in  the 
Revised  Version  as  "A  Psalm  of  thanksgiving";  but  in  the 


PSALM   HEADINGS  187 

Revised  Version  you  find  a  note,  giving  an  alternative  reading, 
"for  the  thank  offering."  This  is  the  correct  rendering  of 
the  words.  The  thank  offering  referred  to  is  the  one  described 
in  the  provisions  of  the  ritual  code  in  Leviticus  vii.  11,  12: 
"  The  law  of  the  sacrifice  of  peace  offerings  .  .  .  when  a  man 
offers  them  for  a  thanksgiving." 

It  is  possible  that  Psalm  xxii.  was  also  appointed  for  use 
in  connexion  with  a  sacrifice,  namely,  the  morning  whole 
burnt  sacrifice.  The  heading  of  the  Psalm  is,  as  it  is  translated 
in  our  King  James  Version,  in  the  marginal  note,  "The 
hind  of  the  morning";  and  it  is  ordinarily  supposed  that  "To 
the  hind  of  the  morning  "  means  "  This  is  to  be  sung  to  the 
tune  known  as  the  Hind  of  the  Morning."  It  is,  however, 
possible,  and  some  of  the  very  earliest  interpretations  of  this 
heading  give  this  rendering,  that  the  words  mean,  "To  be 
sung  at  the  time  of  the  morning  sacrifice."  This  use  of 
psalms  in  connexion  with  sacrifice  was  a  very  early  one.  In 
old  Arabian  sacrificial  usage  the  tahlil^  or  praise  cry,  uttered 
when  the  blood  was  poured  out,  was  an  essential  feature  of  the 
sacrificial  ritual.  Similarly  in  early  Hebrew  use  the  sacrifice 
was  accompanied  by  a  tahillah  (the  same  root  as  the  Arabic 
tahlil)^  or  praise  cry.  Later  these  iehilloth^  or  praise  cries, 
were  developed  into  psalms. 

Psalm  XXX.  was  appointed  to  be  sung  at  the  Feast  of  the 
Dedication.  The  translation  of  this  heading  in  the  King 
James  Version  is  misleading,  namely,  "A  Psalm  and  Song  at 
the  dedication  of  the  house  of  David."  Properly,  the  words 
"of  David"  form  a  sentence  by  themselves.  It  is  the  same 
heading  which  we  find  in  all  the  Psalms,  xxx.-xli.  They 
belong  to  the  so-called  Davidic  Psalter,  or  Psalm  Book,  and 
each  Psalm  is  headed  "  of  David."  It  should  read,  "  A 
Psalm.  A  Song  for  the  Temple  Dedication.  Of  David." 
We  learn  in  i  Maccabees  iv.  52  and  following  verses  that  in  the 
year  B.C.  165,  after  the  Temple  had  been  purified,  a  new  altar 
was  dedicated,  and  we  know  that  later  this  occasion  was 
observed  as  the  Feast  of  the  Dedication,  which  is  referred 
to   in    St.    John's    Gospel   x.    22.      Was    it  for   this   festival 


i88   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

that  this  psalm  was  prescribed  ?  It  is  peculiarly  appro- 
priate for  such  a  purpose,  but  it  is  difficult  to  suppose 
that  a  liturgical  psalm-heading  of  this  character  could  have 
been  composed  so  late. 

Psalm  xcii.  is  another  of  those  which  had  a  special  use 
in  the  ritual.  It  is  appointed  to  be  used  on  the  Sabbath 
day,  and  it  is  certainly  beautifully  adapted  to  that  purpose. 
One  asks.  If  there  were  a  psalm  appointed  for  the  Sabbath, 
were  there  not  also  psalms  appointed  for  the  other  days  of  the 
week  ?  The  headings  of  the  Psalter,  as  they  have  come  down 
to  us  in  the  Hebrew,  show  no  such  appointment,  but  on 
consulting  the  Greek  and  Latin  translations,  and  the  notes 
of  the  Talmud  on  the  use  of  the  Psalter,  we  find  such 
appointments.  Psalm  xxiv.  was  appointed  for  Sunday,  the 
first  day.  If  you  will  turn  to  this  psalm  you  will  see  at 
once  why  it  was  chosen ;  the  first  part  of  the  psalm  makes 
you  think  of  the  beginning  of  creation.  Psalm  xlviii.  for 
Monday  and  Ixxxii.  for  Tuesday  do  not  have  any  such  evident 
appropriateness,  neither  do  xciv.  for  Wednesday,  Ixxxi.  for 
Thursday,  or  xciii.  for  Friday. 

The  Greek  translation  also  tells  us  that  Psalm  xxix.  was 
appointed  to  be  sung  on  the  last  day  of  the  Feast  of  Taber- 
nacles. This  psalm,  if  we  were  to  give  it  a  heading  in  English 
fashion,  we  should  probably  designate  as  "The  Song  of  the 
Seven  Thunders."  It  describes  a  thunderstorm.  You  will 
remember  that  in  Hebrew  use  thunder  is  designated  by  the 
words,  "Voice  of  Yahaweh."  Read  over  this  psalm,  with  its 
sevenfold  repetition  of  "The  Voice  of  Yahaweh,"  thinking 
each  time  you  read  them  of  the  thunder  peal,  and  the 
thunderstorm  will  be  brought  very  vividly  and  realistically 
before  you,  breaking  over  Palestine  from  the  north,  sweeping 
southward,  and  finally  disappearing  in  the  desert.  And  after 
the  destruction  and  violence  of  the  storm  comes  the  calm  and 
peace  that  make  you  think  of  the  gentleness  of  the  presence 
of  God.  (Another  well-known  description  of  the  thunderstorm 
as  the  manifestation  of  the  God  of  Israel  is  contained  in  the 
first  part  of  Psalm  xviii.,  where  the  hailstones  and  the  coals 


PSALM    HEADINGS  189 

of  fire  are  the  flashes  of  lightning  that  reveal  the  presence 
of  God  hidden  in  the  blackness  of  the  thunder  clouds.) 
Psalm  xxix.  was  not,  however,  written  for  the  purpose  of  being 
sung  on  the  last  day  of  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles.  That  was 
the  use  to  which  it  was  finally  assigned. 

In  addition  to  such  liturgical  designations  as  those  to  which 
I  have  already  referred,  there  are  a  number  of  others,  some  of 
them  older  and  some  of  them  later,  and  many  of  them  quite 
unintelligible  to  us  of  the  present  day,  as  they  were  also  to 
those  who  translated  the  Psalter  out  of  the  Hebrew  into 
Greek,  long  before  the  time  of  Christ.  In  connexion  with 
Psalms  Ivii.,  Iviii.,  and  lix.,  I  have  called  attention  to  the  word 
Michta7n,  which  is  translated  in  a  margin  note  of  the  King 
James  Version,  "  The  golden  Psalm."  This  heading  appears 
in  Psalms  Ivi.  and  Ix.,  but  no  one  knows  what  it  means.  The 
heading  Lammenazzeah  occurs  in  the  superscriptions  of  fifty- 
five  psalms.  It  is  ordinarily  rendered  "To  the  chief  Musician." 
The  new  Polychrome  Bible  renders  it  "  For  the  Liturgy."  In 
point  of  fact,  we  do  not  know  what  it  means. 

Psalms  iv.,  vi.,  liv.,  Iv.,  Ixvii.,  and  Ixxvi.  are  described  in 
the  King  James  Version  as  being  "on  Neginoth."  Appar- 
ently this  means  "with  string  music,"  and  refers  to  the 
accompaniment  to  be  used  with  the  psalm  when  used  in  the 
Temple  service.  (Mizmor,  a  heading  frequent  in  the  Psalms, 
may  also  indicate  an  accompaniment  of  stringed  instruments, 
since  zammer,  the  verb  from  which  it  is  derived,  means  to 
twitch  or  play  the  strings).  The  reverse  of  this  is^  found  in 
the  case  of  Psalm  v.,  which  is  described  in  the  King  James 
Version  as  being  "upon  Nehiloth,"  which  appears  to  mean 
"with  wind  instruments."  "Upon  Alamoth,"  which  we  find 
as  the  superscription  of  Psalm  xlvi.,  has  often  been  supposed 
to  mean  with  high-pitched  tenor  or  soprano  voices  only ;  but 
the  Polychrome  Bible  renders  "with  Elamite  instruments." 
Psalm  xii.  bears  the  superscription  "  upon  Sheminith,"  which 
means  literally  "on  the  eighth,"  and  is  supposed  to  mean 
"on  the  octave,"  or,  according  to  the  Polychrome  Bible,  "in 
the  eighth  mode."     The  Selah,  which  we  find  frequently,  not 


190  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

as  a  heading,  but  in  or  at  the  close  of  psalms,  indicates  a 
gloria  or  refrain. 

It  is  ordinarily  supposed  that  the  heading,  "  to  the  Lilies," 
or  "to  the  Lily,"  or  "to  the  Lilies,  a  testimony,"  which 
appears  in  the  superscriptions  of  Psalms  xlv.,  Ix.,  Ixix.,  and 
Ixxx.,  are  the  names  of  a  tune  or  tunes  to  which  these  psalms 
are  to  be  sung.  Similarly  the  superscription  of  Psalm  Ivi., 
"To  the  dove  of  the  distant  terebinths,"  if  the  words  may 
be  so  translated  (they  are  not  translated  in  the  King  James 
Version,  and  the  Polychrome  Bible  translates  them,  "to  the 
tune  of  the  dove  of  the  far-off  islands"),  is  also  the  name  of 
a  tune.  According  to  the  Polychrome  Bible,  the  heading  of 
Psalm  liii.,  "upon  Mahalath,"  also  gives  the  catchword  of  a 
tune,  "to  the  tune  of  Sickness,"  etc. 

There  are,  as  already  said,  a  number  of  liturgical  headings 
which  either  are  not  yet  satisfactorily  explained,  or  for  which 
no  explanation  is  offered.  You  will  find  these  for  the  most 
part  untranslated,  merely  transliterated  from  the  Hebrew  in 
the  King  James  Version.  So  in  Psalm  ix.  you  will  find  the 
heading,  "To  the  chief  Musician  upon  Muth-labben." 
Psalm  vii.  is  called  a  "  Shiggaion " ;  Psalm  xxxii.  a  "  Mas- 
chil";  Psalm  xxxix.  is  "to  Jeduthun."  (In  verse  i6  of 
Psalm  ix.  also  we  have  a  musical  term,  htggaio7i,  the  sense  of 
which  is  unknown). 

If  you  will  study  your  Psalter  carefully,  you  will  observe 
that  musical  headings  of  the  sort  above  described  are  practi- 
cally confined  to  the  first  three  books  of  the  Psalter.  After 
Psalm  Ixxxix.  they  cease.  This  shows,  as  pointed  out  in  a 
previous  chapter,  that  the  psalms  contained  in  the  first  three 
books  of  the  Psalter — i.  to  Ixxxix.  —  had  been  worked  over 
and  arranged  for  liturgical  purposes,  set  to  their  music  and 
accompaniments,  and  the  like,  before  the  last  two  books  of 
the  Psalter  were  added.  The  first  three  books  form  a  collec- 
tion in  this  respect  quite  separate  and  distinct  from  the  last 
two  books  of  the  Psalter ;  at  the  time  when  the  last  two  books 
were  added  these  liturgical  terms  had  ceased  to  be  used,  and 
were  presumably  unintelligible.      We  know  from   the  Greek 


PSALM    HEADINGS  191 

translation  of  the  Psalter  that  they  were  no  longer  intelligible 
when  that  was  made,  for  in  it  they  are  not  translated,  but  for 
the  most  part  transliterated. 

In  a  previous  chapter  I  have  dealt  with  the  heading,  "A 
Song  of  Degrees,"  and  with  the  collection  bearing  that  title, 
namely  Psalms  cxx.-cxxxiv.  It  is  now  generally  agreed  that 
the  proper  translation  is  "A  Pilgrim  Song,"  and  this  little 
collection  was,  therefore,  a  pilgrim  Psalter,  collected  for  the 
use  of,  and  sung  by  the  pilgrims  who  came  up  year  by  year 
to  worship  at  the  Temple  in  Jerusalem. 

There  are  a  number  of  psalms  bearing  historical  headings. 
These  are  especially  frequent  in  the  first  half  of  the  collection 
designated  "Prayers  of  David,"  li.-lxxiii.  An  examination  of 
these  headings  will  show  that  they  were  taken  from  the 
historical  books,  and  that  the  psalms  bear  on  the  whole  no 
relation  to  the  events  referred  to  in  the  headings.  Apparently 
the  title  "Prayers  of  David"  suggested  to  some  Jewish  scholar, 
who  understood  the  title  literally,  to  connect  them  with 
David's  history  as  related  in  the  books  of  Samuel.  He  did 
not  go  all  through  the  "Prayers  of  David"  in  this  manner, 
but  only  through  the  first  half.  Psalms  li.-lxiii.  Afterwards 
his  unfinished  work  found  admirers,  and  his  proposed  identi- 
fications were  placed  at  the  heads  of  the  psalms  he  had 
annotated.  In  the  first  book  of  Psalms,  the  Psalter  of  David, 
there  are  also  three  psalms,  iii.,  vii.,  xviii.,  with  historical 
headings.  Psalm  xviii.  appears  again  in  the  Book  of  Samuel, 
and  its  position  there  explains  its  title.  Given  the  belief  that 
David  wrote  Psalm  iii.,  the  reason  of  the  present  heading 
is  apparent.  Whence  the  heading  of  Psalm  vii.  is  derived, 
or  what  is  the  event  or  the  individual  referred  to,  has  not 
yet  been  made  out. 

There  are,  further,  one  or  two  psalms  near  the  close  of  the 
whole  collection  of  Psalms,  namely,  the  cxxxix.,  cxl,  and 
cxlii.,  which  have  liturgical  directions  like  those  in  the  first 
part  of  the  Psalter.  These  belong  to  a  small  collection  of 
late  date,  entitled  "Psalms  of  David,"  consisting  of  Psalms 
cxxxviii.-cxlv.,  which  appear   to   have   been   modelled   after 


192    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

and  to  have  borrowed  their  headings,  already  unintelligible, 
from  the  "Psalms  of  David"  in  the  older  Psalter. 

It  may  be  that  some  day  we  shall  make  discoveries  with 
regard  to  the  ancient  Hebrew  music,  similar  to,  or  even  more 
important  than,  the  discoveries  about  Greek  music  made  by 
the  French  at  Delphi.  In  the  meantime,  speculative  and 
philological  study  seem  to  have  reached  their  utmost  limit  in 
the  interpretation  of  these  psalm  headings. 

I  have  already  pointed  out  that  the  psalms  which  are 
designated  by  their  headings  for  certain  particular  purposes, 
such  as  vintage  songs  and  the  like,  were  not  originally  written 
for  that  purpose.  In  the  case  of  a  great  part  of  the  Psalms 
we  are  unable  to  say  that  they  were  written  for  any  specific 
purpose;  they  are  quite  indefinite  and  general  in  their  form, 
and  whatever  may  have  been  the  occasion  of  their  composition, 
they  have  been  so  modified  in  the  liturgical  use  that  we  can 
no  longer  determine  when  or  why  they  were  composed. 
There  are,  however,  in  the  last  two  books  of  the  Psalter, 
quite  a  number  of  psalms  which  were  written  just  as  they 
stand  for  liturgical  use.  We  have,  also,  several  hymns 
composed  as  processionals,  like  Ixviii.  and  cviii.  Psalm 
xlv.,  which  is,  by  the  way,  the  least  religious  hymn  of  the 
Psalter,  is  a  marriage  hymn,  and  is,  in  fact,  so  designated 
in  the  heading ;  there  are  also  several  harvest  hymns,  of  which 
Ixv.  is  the  most  beautiful. 

In  conclusion,  let  me  cite  a  part  of  this  last-mentioned 
psalm,  which  is,  as  it  seems  to  me,  one  of  the  most  ex- 
quisite descriptions  of  the  country,  rich  to  the  harvest, 
that  has  ever  been  written. 

"Thou  didst  vigit  the  earth  and  water  it, 
Greatly  enriching  it 
(God's  river  i.s  full  of  water), 
Preparing  their  corn, 
For  thus  Thou  preparest  it : 
Her  furrows  wiatering,  her  ridges  smoothing, 
With  showers  Thou  softenest  her,  her  sprouting 
/  Thou  blessest. 


PSALM   HEADINGS  ,93 

*'Thou  hast  crowned  the  year  with  Thy  goodness, 
Whose  chariot  wheels  drop  fatness. 
Wilderness  pastures  run  over, 
And  the  hills  are  girt  with  joy. 
The  meadows  are  clad  with  flocks. 
And  the  valleys  clothed  with  grain." 

You  will  appreciate  still  more  the  beauty  of  this,  if  you  will 
recollect  the  character  of  the  hills  of  Palestine,  and  how  the 
fields  were  terraced  one  above  another  up  the  steep  mountain 
slopes,  so  that  the  wilderness  pastures  did  very  literally  run 
over  the  one  into  the  other,  and  the  hills  were  girt  about  in 
great  bands  with  girdles  of  different  harvests. 


o 


CHAPTER   X 

THE   STORY   OF   THE    PRAYER   BOOK 
PSALTER 

I  PRESUME  that  every  intelligent  Churchman  has  noticed 
the  difference  between  the  psalms  as  we  have  them  in  the 
Prayer  Book  and  as  we  have  them  in  the  Bible,  but  I  imagine 
that  there  are  many  who,  although  they  have  noticed  the 
difference,  have  not  reflected  upon  the  meaning  and  the  cause 
of  that  difference.  There  are  still  more,  I  fancy,  who  do  not 
know  why  we  sing  or  say  the  Psalms  through  once  a  month, 
theoretically  at  least,  nor  when  and  why  that  peculiarly 
Anglican  method  of  using  the  Psalms  was  adopted. 

Now  of  course  every  one  knows  that  the  Psalms  were 
originally  written  in  Hebrew,  and  that  they  constituted  what 
we  may  call  the  authorised  hymn-book  of  the  Jewish  Church. 
Together  with  the  rest  of  the  Hebrew  Old  Testament  they 
were  translated  into  Greek  for  the  use  of  the  Greek-speaking 
Jews  of  Alexandria,  a  translation  which  is  ordinarily  known 
as  the  Septuagint.  Later  other  translations  into  Greek  were 
made,  some  more  literal  and  some  less  so,  some  better  and  some 
worse.  These  translations  were  used  quite  indiscriminately, 
as  it  would  appear,  in  the  early  Christian  Church,  the  members 
of  which  spoke  Greek,  and  not  Hebrew.  Indeed,  there  were 
in  the  early  Church,  after  the  Apostolic  age,  almost  none  who 
understood  Hebrew  at  all.  As  there  was  no  authorised  or 
official  translation,  occupying  a  place  like  that  which  the  King 
James  or  Authorised  Version  holds  with  us,  these  various 
Greek  versions  not  only  became  very  much  mixed  up  with  one 
another,  but  a  great  many  corruptions  crept  into  the  text.     As 

194 


THE   PRAYER   BOOK   PSALTER  195 

the  Church  spread  over  the  West,  where  Latin  was  the 
language  of  the  people,  the  Greek  versions  of  the  Scriptures 
were  in  their  turn  translated  into  Latin,  with  the  natural  result 
that  the  Latin  translations  from  the  Greek  were  still  more 
corrupt,  inaccurate,  and  farther  removed  from  the  original 
Hebrew  than  the  Greek  translations  from  which  they  were 
made.  The  Latin  translation  best  known  to  us,  and  indeed 
the  only  one  of  which  we  have  any  real  knowledge  before  the 
time  of  Jerome,  is  the  so-called  Itala,  a  translation  supposed 
to  have  been  made  in  the  Church  of  Northern  Africa. 

Some  time  in  the  first  half  of  the  second  century  after 
Christ,  Origen,  the  greatest  Christian  scholar  of  his  day, 
disturbed  by  the  many  and  serious  inaccuracies  of  the  Greek 
translations  then  in  vogue,  undertook  to  collate  the  various  Greek 
translations  and  compare  them  with  the  Hebrew  original  for  the 
purpose  of  obtaining  a  more  correct  text ;  a  work  which 
brought  him  into  much  disfavour  at  the  time,  although  it  won 
him  fame  and  honour  at  a  later  date.  More  than  a  hundred 
years  later  St.  Jerome,  secretary  to  Pope  Damasus  of  Rome, 
undertook  to  do  for  the  Latin  Bible  much  the  same  thing 
which  Origen  had  done  for  the  Greek.  At  first,  however,  his 
idea  seems  to  have  been  merely  to  make  the  Latin  Bible 
a  more  correct  translation  of  the  Greek,  for  at  that  time  he 
had  no  knowledge  of  Hebrew.  Indeed,  the  Greek  translations 
appear  to  have  been  regarded  as  inspired  equally  with  the 
original  Hebrew,  so  that  it  probably  seemed  to  him  quite 
enough  to  correct  the  Latin  and  bring  it  into  harmony  with 
the  Greek.  His  first  work  was  done  on  the  Psalter,  which 
was  the  part  of  the  Old  Testament  most  freely  used  in  the 
services  of  the  Church,  being  the  hymn-book  of  the  Christian 
just  as  it  had  been  of  the  Jewish  Church.  His  aim  was  to 
bring  the  Itala,  the  Latin  translation  of  which  we  have  already 
spoken,  more  into  harmony  with  the  Greek.  This  revision  of 
the  Itala  version  of  the  Psalms  was  adopted  as  the  Roman 
Psalter.  It  was  not  a  thorough  work,  as  Jerome  only  attempted 
to  correct  the  most  glaring  errors  of  the  old  translation,  and 
he  himself  was  not  satisfied  with  it.     Accordingly,  a  little  later 


196   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

he  made  a  new  translation  from  the  Greek,  for  he  had  not  yet,    • 
I  believe,  conceived  the  idea  of  translating  directly  from  the 
original  Hebrew.     Indeed,  it  was  a  very  unpopular  thing  ther 
as  it  is  now,  to  propose  to  correct  any  errors  in  Bible  transl 
tions,  no  matter  how  patent  they  might  be,  and  Jerome  w 
roundly  abused  for  his  pains,  and  accused  of  upsetting  t 
faith  and  tampering  with  the  truths  of  Holy  Scripture:  ye, 
much  such  accusations  as  are  sometimes  brought  against  Bi 
scholars  nowadays,  when  they  venture  to  propose  any  correct 
of  the  received  text  of  the  Bible.     People  regarded  him  as 
enemy  of  the  Bible,  who  was  attacking  it,  and  not  as  a  love 
the  truth,  who  was  trying  to  remove  error  and  let  the  Chv^^^^^ 
see   exactly   what   the   Bible  really  said.     Even  the  fan"^  ^"^ 
St.  Augustine  wrote  against  Jerome's  work,  believing  tha'^S^'^^ 
was  upsetting  the  whole  system  of  theology  by  showing  pe-^  ^^^ 
through  his  correction  of  the  received  translation  of  the  l^ause 
that  there  were  errors  in  that  translation,  and  in  some  c*-*  ^°^  • 
errors  which  had  been  used  as  proof-texts.  lonth, 

Fortunately,  however,  Jerome,  in   spite  of  all  abuse^^^^^^y^ 
opposition,  kept   on  with   his  work.     He   soon   saw   t  a 

translation  from  the  Greek  into  Latin  was  not  sufficien  ^  ^^^^d 
decided  to  attempt  to  translate  the  Old  Testament  d^^  whaiy 
from  the  Hebrew  into  Latin.  But  this  was  no  easy  task^^^^  J^o 
Christian  knew  Hebrew,  and  it  was  necessary  to  finr^^^  ^'^^ne 
Jew  who,  in  spite  of  the  prejudices  on  both  sides,  sl'f'^P^'^      be 

willing  to  teach  him   that   language.     Then    r^ ^v  know;)st; 

difficult  matter  to  obtain  a  Hebrew  text,  since  '^^^  Greek  we  .^y 
carefully  guarded  by  the  Jews,  that  they  mig^^^^^^^  ^"^  ^°"^ito 
the  hands  of  those  whom  they  counted  as  ur  mdiscrimmatel^d 
as  Jerome's  temper  was,  and  outrageous  as  wa^^^  '  membe  j^ 
some  respects,  he  yet  certainly  earned  from  ^^^^^^j  there  weij^e 
title  of  saint  by  the  persistence  and  courag'  ^l"^ost  none  wh^e 
overcame  all  obstacles  until  he  finally  succe*  "^  authorised  qiy 
translating  the  Old  Testament  into  Latin  i^^^  which  the  Kii^he 
Hebrew.  He  did  not,  to  be  sure,  obtain  t^  ^^'  these  variCjj.^;iis 
work  at  once,  and  it  was  not  until  long  aft  "^^^^^  up  with  C^^^t 
through  its  manifest  merits  his  translation  f(f  ^^^^  ^^  ^^^^'     V-to 


THE   PRAYER   BOOK   PSALTER  197 

use  as  the  Bible  of  the  Western  Church.  It  is  this  translation 
which,  with  some  change  and  corruptions,  has  come  down  to 
us  as  the  Vulgate,  except  only  in  the  case  of  the  Psalter,  the 
translation  of  which  in  the  Latin  Vulgate  is  not  St.  Jerome's 
translation  from  the  Hebrew. 

The  Psalter  was  the  hymn-book  of  the  Church,  familiar 
from  childhood  to  every  Christian.  The  old  Latin  translation 
had,  in  the  mouth  of  the  Church,  sung  itself  into  a  real  hymn 
form,  and  at  the  same  time  it  had  sung  itself  into  the  affec- 
tions of  the  people,  and  could  not  readily  be  displaced. 
Jerome's  translation  from  the  Hebrew  was  undoubtedly  more 
correct  as  a  translation,  but  it  deviated  too  much  from  the 
familiar  form  of  the  old  Latin  translation  so  long  used  in  the 
Church,  and  was  not,  moreover,  so  well  adapted  to  singing. 
Nevertheless  the  old  translation  was  so  glaringly  incorrect  that 
it  was  manifest  to  the  more  scholarly  men  in  the  Church  that 
some  sort  of  a  change  must  be  made.  Jerome's  correction  of 
that  translation  by  a  comparison  with  the  Greek  was,  as  we 
have  seen,  adopted  at  Rome,  and  came  to  be  known  as  the 
Roman  Psalter.  But  this  also  was  too  clearly  incorrect,  and 
so  at  last,  more  than  a  century  and  a  half  after  Jerome's  death, 
and  two  hundred  years  after  the  completion  of  the  work  itself, 
his  second  Psalter,  the  translation  from  the  Greek,  which  was 
nearer  to  the  old  Latin  Psalter  in  its  phraseology  than  his 
translation  from  the  Hebrew,  and  which  was  also  better 
adapted  than  that  for  use  as  a  hymn-book,  was  adopted  for 
Church  use  in  Gaul  by  the  famous  Gregory  of  Tours,  it  is 
said,  and  from  Gaul  spread  over  the  whole  Western  Church, 
until  it  was  finally  incorporated  in  the  Vulgate,  or  Latin  Bible. 
From  the  place  of  its  adoption  it  came  to  be  known  as  the 
Galilean  Psalter. 

At  the  time  of  the  Reformation,  then,  the  Psalter  in  use  in 
the  Western  Church  was  a  Latin  translation  made  by  St. 
Jerome  from  previous  Greek  translations,  and  not  directly 
from  the  original  Hebrew.  Now  before  the  Reformation 
many  of  the  Psalms  of  this  Galilean  Psalter  had  already  been 
translated  into  English  and  made  known  to  the  people  through 


198   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

the  so-called  primers  which  preceded  the  Prayer  Book,  so  that 
when  the  Reformation  came  the  people  were  already  familiar 
with  some  portions  of  the  Gallican  Psalter  in  an  English 
dress.  This  seriously  influenced  translators  of  the  Bible, 
and  when  finally  the  Bible  of  1539,  Coverdale's  translation, 
emended  by  Cranmer  and  others,  the  Great  Bible,  as  it  was 
called,  was  adopted  by  the  English  Church  for  use  in  public 
readings,  it  was  the  Latin  Psalter,  translated  by  St.  Jerome 
from  the  Greek,  and  not  the  Hebrew,  which  was  adopted  as 
the  basis  of  the  Psalter  translation.  This  translation  was, 
to  be  sure,  corrected  somewhat  after  the  Hebrew,  and  the 
Hebrew  numbering  of  the  Psalms  was  adopted  instead  of  the 
Greek  numbering  used  in  the  Gallican  Psalter  of  St.  Jerome ; 
but  after  all,  it  was  really  the  Latin  Psalter,  and  not  the 
Hebrew,  which  was  translated  into  English  and  adopted  as 
the  Psalm  Book  of  the  English  Church.  This  translation  was 
beautifully  adapted  to  singing,  and  soon  sang  itself  into  popular 
favour,  as  the  old  Latin  Psalter  had  done  before  it. 

In  161 1  the  King  James,  or  Westminster  Revision  of  the 
Bible  appeared.  It  was  a  much  more  correct  rendering  of 
the  Bible  from  the  original  languages  than  any  which  had 
previously  been  published,  and  was  adopted  as  the  authorised 
version.  But  Prayer  Book  changes  are  hard  to  make,  and  it 
was  not  until  1662,  fifty  years  later,  that  this  translation  was 
adopted  for  the  Epistles  and  Gospels  instead  of  the  translation 
of  1539,  which  had  been  used  up  to  that  time.  It  was  the 
intention  in  this  revision  of  the  Prayer  Book  in  1662  to 
change  all  the  passages  of  Scripture  used  in  the  Prayer  Book 
from  the  translation  of  the  Great  Bible  to  that  of  the 
Authorised,  or  King  James  Version ;  but  the  same  thing 
happened  in  the  case  of  the  Psalter  which  had  happened 
before  in  the  Latin-speaking  churches  of  the  West.  The 
Psalter  had  so  sung  itself  into  the  affections  of  the  people 
that  it  could  not  be  changed.  Moreover,  the  old  Psalter,  the 
one  translated  from  the  Latin,  was  much  better  adapted  to 
singing  than  the  newer  and  more  literally  accurate  translation 
from  the  Hebrew,  which  was  stiff  and  prosaic  in  comparison. 


THE   PRAYER   BOOK   PSALTER  199 

So  it  came  to  pass  that  the  old  translation  of  the  Psalter  was 
retained,  and  has  come  down  as  the  Psalter  of  the  Church. 
Our  Psalter  is,  then,  a  translation  from  the  Latin  of  St.  Jerome, 
which  is  in  its  turn  a  translation  from  the  Greek,  which  in  its 
turn  was  translated  from  the  original  Hebrew.  Such  is  the 
history  of  the  translation  of  the  Psalms  contained  in  our 
Prayer  Book  Psalter.  It  may  be  added  that  although  this 
translation,  viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  literalness,  is  in- 
ferior to  that  contained  in  the  King  James  Version  of  the 
Bible,  it  is,  nevertheless,  far  superior  to  it  in  that  it  has  caught 
something  of  the  swing  and  spirit  of  Hebrew  poetry,  and  it 
is,  therefore,  much  to  be  preferred  for  liturgical  use,  where 
pedantic  accuracy  is  a  matter  of  secondary  importance. 

So  much  for  our  Prayer  Book  translation  of  the  Psalter. 
Now  let  us  consider  the  use  of  the  Psalms  in  the  services  of 
the  Church,  and  first  of  all,  of  the  Jewish  Church.  If  you 
will  turn  to  Psalms  xxxviii.  and  Ixx.,  in  the  Canterbury  or 
Revised  Version  of  the  Bible,  you  will  find  in  the  headings  of 
those  psalms  these  words,  "  to  bring  to  remembrance,"  and  in 
the  margin  you  will  find  an  alternative  reading,  "to  make 
memorial." 

Now  the  word  translated  "bring  to  remembrance,"  or 
"make  memorial,"  means  literally  "to  make  azkara^  The 
azkara  was  that  part  of  the  meal  or  vegetable  offering  called 
"meat  offering,"  in  the  Authorised  translation  of  the  Bible, 
which  was  cast  into  the  sacrificial  fire  as  God's  portion. 
These  psalms  were  appointed  to  be  used  in  the  Temple  in 
connexion  with  the  sacrifice  or  office  of  the  azkara. 

Turning  to  Psalm  xcii.  in  the  Canterbury  Revision,  you  will 
see  that  this  is  headed,  "A  Psalm,  a  Song  for  the  sabbath 
day."  That  is  to  say,  this  psalm  was  appointed  to  be  sung  in 
the  sacrificial  service  in  the  Temple  on  the  Sabbath  day.  But 
if  there  was  a  psalm  which  was  appointed  to  be  sung  on  the 
Sabbath  day,  it  would  seem  probable  that  there  were  stated 
psalms  for  other  days  also,  since  there  were  sacrifices  on  those 
days ;  and  from  a  study  of  the  Jewish  traditions  preserved  to 
us  by  the  rabbis,   we  find  that  this  was  actually  the  case. 


200   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Psalm  xxiv.,  we  are  told  in  the  Talmud,  was  appointed  for 
Sunday,  xlviii.  for  Monday,  Ixxxii.  for  Tuesday,  xciv.  for 
Wednesday,  Ixxxi.  for  Thursday,  and  xciii.  for  Friday. 
These  constituted  the  psalters  for  the  respective  days  in  the 
service  of  the  daily  morning  sacrifice  in  the  Jewish  Temple, 
and  were  sung  week  in  and  week  out.  But  we  also  learn 
from  Jewish  tradition  that  on  certain  special  occasions  special 
psalms  were  used  in  place  of  the  psalter  for  the  day,  as,  for 
instance,  Psalm  Ixxxi.  at  morning  sacrifice,  on  the  new  moon 
of  the  seventh  month.  We  also  learn  that  there  were  psalms 
appointed  for  the  service  of  evening  sacrifice  in  the  Temple. 
So,  on  the  same  new  moon  of  the  seventh  month.  Psalm  xxix. 
was  to  be  used  at  the  evening  sacrifice.  These  selections 
were,  it  will  be  observed,  very  short  in  comparison  with  our 
present  use,  rather  resembling  in  that  regard  what  we  now 
know  as  anthems.  So  when  in  the  Jewish  service  Deuter- 
onomy xxxii.  was  appointed  to  be  used — the  Song  of  Moses 
— it  was  divided  into  six  sections,  one  of  which  was  considered 
enough  for  a  service.  But  there  were  also  occasions  on  which 
an  entire  group  of  psalms  was  appointed  to  be  sung,  the  most 
famous  of  these  groups  being  the  Haliel,  Psalms  cxi.-cxviii., 
which  was  sung  at  the  feasts  of  the  Passover  and  Dedication, 
and  the  fifteen  Psalms  of  Degrees,  sung  at  the  Feast  of  Taber- 
nacles. 

The  Jews  were  in  the  habit  of  treating  the  psalms  quite 
freely  for  liturgical  purposes,  abbreviating  them,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  in  the  case  of  the  Song  of  Moses,  or  combining 
psalms  or  portions  of  psalms  to  make  new  psalms  for  special 
occasions.  This  is  well  shown  in  the  case  of  the  composite 
psalms  in  the  Psalter,  like  Psalm  cviii,,  which  is  composed  of 
verses  8-12  of  Psalm  Ivii.  and  6-12  of  Psalm  Ix.  It  is  still 
better  shown  by  the  psalm  of  dedication  contained  in  i  Chron- 
icles xvi.,  which  is  composed  from  Psalms  cv.,  xcvi.,  and  cvi., 
containing  not  a  single  original  verse. 

The  Jews  were  also  in  the  habit  of  singing  a  doxology,  or 
ascription  of  praise  after  each  chant  or  selection  of  psalms. 
So  the  chant  just  alluded  to  in  i  Chronicles  xvi.  concludes  with 


THE   PRAYER   ^OOK   PSALTER  201 

the  doxology,  "  Blessed  be  the  Lord,  the  God  of  Israel,  from 
everlasting  even  to  everlasting."  Each  book  of  the  psalms  in 
the  Hebrew  Psalter  concluded  with  such  a  doxology,  which 
was  intended  to  be  sung  after  the  various  psalms  or  groups  of 
psalms  used  in  the  worship  of  the  Temple.  These  doxologies 
are  unfortunately  printed  in  our  Bibles  as  though  they  were 
component  parts  of  the  psalms  immediately  preceding,  but 
you  can  readily  distinguish  them  by  turning  to  the  Canterbury 
Revision.  They  are  verse  13  of  Psalm  xli,,  verses  18  and  19 
of  Psalm  Ixxii.,  verse  52  of  Psalm  Ixxxix.,  and  verse  48  of 
Psalm  cvi.,  which  latter  is  the  same  as  verse  13  of  Psalm  xli., 
the  doxology  of  the  first  book,  except  that  it  contains  a  rubric 
directing  all  the  people  to  say  "Amen,"  and  that  it  has  a 
hallelujah  added  at  the  end.  There  are  also  two  doxologies 
in  the  Psalter  which  are  printed  as  separate  psalms,  namely, 
Psalm  cxvii.,  which  was  originally  the  doxology  to  a  Halle- 
lujah collection  consisting  of  Psalms  cxi.-cxvii.,  and  cxxxiv., 
which,  from  the  position  in  which  it  is  placed,  looks  as 
though  it  might  have  been  the  doxology  of  the  collection 
of  Psalms  of  Degrees  when  they  were  used  in  the  services 
of  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles.  Psalm  cl.,  which  is  a  still  longer 
doxology  than  either  of  these,  forms  the  close  of  another 
group  of  psalms  intended  for  liturgical  use  in  the  Temple 
service,  beginning  with  Psalm  cxlv.  These  three  doxologies 
would  seem  to  have  been  intended  for  use  at  the  close  of  the 
particular  groups  of  psalms  after  which  they  are  printed,  very 
much  as  in  America  in  some  churches  the  Gloria  in  Excelsis 
is  sung  at  the  close  of  the  entire  evening  Psalter.  The  lesser 
doxologies  at  the  close  of  the  first  four  books  of  psalms 
resemble  rather  our  Gloria  Patri^  and  were  intended  to  be 
used  after  any  psalms  taken  from  those  books  which  might  be 
sung  in  the  Temple  service.  It  must  be  remembered,  more- 
over, that  when  those  doxologies  were  put  there,  these  various 
books  were  so  many  separate  collections  or  hymn-books,  as 
though  it  were  Hymns  Anciefit  and  Modern^  The  Hymnal, 
etc.  At  the  close  of  each  of  these  collections  or  hymnals  was 
printed  a  doxology  in  the  same  way  in  which  is  printed  at  the 


202    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

close  of  the  American  hymnals  a  selection  of  doxologies  to  be 
used  after  the  various  hymns  therein  contained.  But  whereas 
ou^  method  of  hymn  -  singing  requires  us  to  use  different 
doxologies  for  different  metres,  and  hence  to  print  a  number 
of  variant  forms  of  the  doxology  at  the  close  of  our  hymnals, 
their  metres  and  their  method  of  singing  rendered  it  possible 
to  sing  the  same  doxology  to  every  psalm,  and  hence  only 
one  doxology  had  to  be  provided  at  the  close  of  their  hymn- 
books. 

But  not  only  did  the  Jewish  Church  have  the  same  method 
of  using  doxologies  which  we  now  have,  and  which  indeed  we 
borrowed  from  them,  it  had  also  the  same  method  of  using 
the  amen  and  the  hallelujah.  So  at  the  close  of  the  chant 
to  which  I  have  already  referred  in  i  Chronicles  xvi.,  we  are 
told  that  "all  the  people  said.  Amen,  and  Hallelujah";  and 
at  the  close  of  Psalm  cvi.  there  is  a  rubric,  unfortunately 
printed  in  both  our  Bibles  and  Prayer  Books  as  part  of  the 
psalm  itself,  to  this  effect,  "  And  let  all  the  people  say,  Amen, 
Hallelujah."  It  was  the  practice,  in  other  words,  at  the  close 
of  the  doxology  to  respond,  "Amen."  This  was  also  the 
practice  after  prayers,  as  we  know,  and  the  Christians  adopted 
that  practice  from  the  Jews.  It  was  also,  as  the  cases  just 
cited  and  others  show,  the  practice  after  doxologies,  and,  there- 
fore, in  placing  an  amen  at  the  end  of  the  Gloria  Fatrt,  the 
Christians  were  but  copying  the  old  Hebrew  use.  So  also 
when  after  some  of  our  praise  hymns,  especially  in  the  Easter 
season,  we  sing  "Hallelujah,"  we  are  but  copying  the  old  Jewish 
use  again.  In  fact,  the  amens  and  hallelujahs  in  the  Psalter  are 
not  original  parts  of  the  psalms  with  which  they  are  connected, 
but  liturgical  directions,  if  I  may  so  express  it,  like  the  aniens 
which  we  sing  at  the  close  of  our  hymns. 

To  sum  up»  the  Jews  had  a  daily  Psalter,  arranged  according 
to  the  week,  not  the  month.  They  had  special  psalms  for 
special  festivals.  They  composed  anthems  by  divisions  and 
combinations  of  the  psalms,  as  well  as  by  new  compositions. 
They  sang  a  doxology  at  the  close  of  each  selection  of  psalms 
used  in  a  service  and  at  the  close  of  anthems.     They  made 


THE   PRAYER   BOOK   PSALTER  203 

use  at  the  close  of  the  doxology  of  the  response,  Amen.  They 
used  liturgically,  sometimes  at  the  dose  of  their  hymns 
and  sometimes  at  the  beginning,  the  ascription  of  praise, 
Hallelujah. 

When  the  Christian  Church  was  founded  the  Psalter  became 
the  hymn-book  of  the  Christians  as  it  had  been  of  the  Jews, 
and  the  early  Christians  not  only  continued  to  use  the  ancient 
Psalter,  but  also  adopted  its  spirit  and  began  to  compose  new 
psalms,  as  the  Jews  had  done  before  them.  For  while  the 
Psalter  as  we  have  it  was  closed  about  one  hundred  and  fifty 
years  before  Christ,  the  Jews  after  this  date  still  continued  to 
compose  psalms  on  the  ancient  models,  which,  if  they  were 
not  adopted  into  the  canonical  hymn-book,  that  is,  the  Psalter, 
were,  nevertheless,  used  by  pious  Jews  for  purposes  of  sacred 
song.  One  considerable  collection  of  this  sort,  composed  by 
Pharisees  some  forty  years  or  so  before  the  birth  of  our  Lord, 
is  still  extant,  being  generally  known  as  the  "Psalms  of 
Solomon."  These  Psalms,  as  we  have  them,  are  written  in 
Greek,  but  are  supposed  to  be  translated  from  a  Hebrew 
original.  They  illustrate  the  development  of  Jewish  thought 
and  belief,  particularly  with  regard  to  the  coming  of  the 
expected  Messiah,  between  the  close  of  the  Old  Testament 
canon  and  the  birth  of  Jesus.  As  an  example  of  the  contents 
of  these  psalms,  let  me  quote  a  part  of  the  second  psalm,  in 
which  allusion  is  made  to  the  death  of  Pompey.  After 
picturing  the  misery  and  degradation  of  Jerusalem  through 
the  wickedness  of  her  own  children,  culminating  in  the 
occupation  of  the  city  by  Pompey  the  Great  and  the  Romans 
and  the  profanation  of  the  Temple  itself,  the  psalm  passes 
into  a  prayer  to  God  for  deliverance  and  vengeance,  followed 
by  a  triumphant  description,  if  we  may  call  it  a  description,  of 
Pompey's  death  and  the  lesson  taught  by  it.  Commencing 
with  the  prayer,  the  psalm  reads  thus — 

"  And  I  saw  and  entreated  the  face  of  the  Lord,  and  said : 
Enough,    O   Lord,    hath    Thine    hand    been    heavy   upon 
Jerusalem  in  bringing  in  the  heathen ; 


202    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

close  of  the  American  hymnals  a  selection  of  doxologies  to  be 
used  after  the  various  hymns  therein  contained.  But  whereas 
our  method  of  hymn  -  singing  requires  us  to  use  different 
doxologies  for  different  metres,  and  hence  to  print  a  number 
of  variant  forms  of  the  doxology  at  the  close  of  our  hymnals, 
their  metres  and  their  method  of  singing  rendered  it  possible 
to  sing  the  same  doxology  to  every  psalm,  and  hence  only 
one  doxology  had  to  be  provided  at  the  close  of  their  hymn- 
books. 

But  not  only  did  the  Jewish  Church  have  the  same  method 
of  using  doxologies  which  we  now  have,  and  which  indeed  we 
borrowed  from  them,  it  had  also  the  same  method  of  using 
the  amen  and  the  hallelujah.  So  at  the  close  of  the  chant 
to  which  I  have  already  referred  in  i  Chronicles  xvi.,  we  are 
told  that  "all  the  people  said.  Amen,  and  Hallelujah";  and 
at  the  close  of  Psalm  cvi.  there  is  a  rubric,  unfortunately 
printed  in  both  our  Bibles  and  Prayer  Books  as  part  of  the 
psalm  itself,  to  this  effect,  "  And  let  all  the  people  say,  Amen, 
Hallelujah."  It  was  the  practice,  in  other  words,  at  the  close 
of  the  doxology  to  respond,  "Amen."  This  was  also  the 
practice  after  prayers,  as  we  know,  and  the  Christians  adopted 
that  practice  from  the  Jews.  It  was  also,  as  the  cases  just 
cited  and  others  show,  the  practice  after  doxologies,  and,  there- 
fore, in  placing  an  amen  at  the  end  of  the  Gloria  Fatrt,  the 
Christians  were  but  copying  the  old  Hebrew  use.  So  also 
when  after  some  of  our  praise  hymns,  especially  in  the  Easter 
season,  we  sing  "Hallelujah,"  we  are  but  copying  the  old  Jewish 
use  again.  In  fact,  the  ame7ts  and  hallelujahs  in  the  Psalter  are 
not  original  parts  of  the  psalms  with  which  they  are  connected, 
but  liturgical  directions,  if  I  may  so  express  it,  like  the  ajnens 
which  we  sing  at  the  close  of  our  hymns. 

To  sum  up,  the  Jews  had  a  daily  Psalter,  arranged  according 
to  the  week,  not  the  month.  They  had  special  psalms  for 
special  festivals.  They  composed  anthems  by  divisions  and 
combinations  of  the  psalms,  as  well  as  by  new  compositions. 
They  sang  a  doxology  at  the  close  of  each  selection  of  psalms 
used  in  a  service  and  at  the  close  of  anthems.     They  made 


THE   PRAYER   BOOK   PSALTER  203 

use  at  the  close  of  the  doxology  of  the  response,  Amen.  They 
used  liturgically,  sometimes  at  the  dose  of  their  hymns 
and  sometimes  at  the  beginning,  the  ascription  of  praise, 
Hallelujah. 

When  the  Christian  Church  was  founded  the  Psalter  became 
the  hymn-book  of  the  Christians  as  it  had  been  of  the  Jews, 
and  the  early  Christians  not  only  continued  to  use  the  ancient 
Psalter,  but  also  adopted  its  spirit  and  began  to  compose  new 
psalms,  as  the  Jews  had  done  before  them.  For  while  the 
Psalter  as  we  have  it  was  closed  about  one  hundred  and  fifty 
years  before  Christ,  the  Jews  after  this  date  still  continued  to 
compose  psalms  on  the  ancient  models,  which,  if  they  were 
not  adopted  into  the  canonical  hymn-book,  that  is,  the  Psalter, 
were,  nevertheless,  used  by  pious  Jews  for  purposes  of  sacred 
song.  One  considerable  collection  of  this  sort,  composed  by 
Pharisees  some  forty  years  or  so  before  the  birth  of  our  Lord, 
is  still  extant,  being  generally  known  as  the  "Psalms  of 
Solomon."  These  Psalms,  as  we  have  them,  are  written  in 
Greek,  but  are  supposed  to  be  translated  from  a  Hebrew 
original.  They  illustrate  the  development  of  Jewish  thought 
and  belief,  particularly  with  regard  to  the  coming  of  the 
expected  Messiah,  between  the  close  of  the  Old  Testament 
canon  and  the  birth  of  Jesus.  As  an  example  of  the  contents 
of  these  psalms,  let  me  quote  a  part  of  the  second  psalm,  in 
which  allusion  is  made  to  the  death  of  Pompey.  After 
picturing  the  misery  and  degradation  of  Jerusalem  through 
the  wickedness  of  her  own  children,  culminating  in  the 
occupation  of  the  city  by  Pompey  the  Great  and  the  Romans 
and  the  profanation  of  the  Temple  itself,  the  psalm  passes 
into  a  prayer  to  God  for  deliverance  and  vengeance,  followed 
by  a  triumphant  description,  if  we  may  call  it  a  description,  of 
Pompey's  death  and  the  lesson  taught  by  it.  Commencing 
with  the  prayer,  the  psalm  reads  thus — 

"  And  I  saw  and  entreated  the  face  of  the  Lord,  and  said : 
Enough,    O   Lord,    hath    Thine    hand    been    heavy   upon 
Jerusalem  in  bringing  in  the  heatnen ; 


204   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

For  they  mocked  and  spared  not,  in  wrath  and  anger  with 
vengeance ; 

And  they  will  make  an  end,  if  Thou,  Lord,  rebuke  them 
not  in  Thy  wrath. 

For  not  in  zeal  have  they  done  it,  but  in  their  own  lust. 

To  pour  out  their  wrath  upon  us  in  rapine. 

Tarry  not,  O  God,  to  requite  upon  their  heads, 

To  turn  the  pride  of  the  dragon  to  dishonour. 

And  whiles  I  prayed  God  showed  me  that  proud  one 
(Pompey),  pierced  on  the  coasts  of  Egypt,  abased  below  the 
least  on  earth  and  sea ;  his  body,  corrupted  on  the  waves,  in 
great  contempt,  and  none  burying.  For  He  abased  him  in 
dishonour. 

He  considered  not  that  he  was  man,  and  his  latter  end  he 
observed  not. 

He  said :  I  will  be  lord  of  earth  and  sea ; 

And  perceived  not  that  God  is  great ; 

He  is  king  upon  the  heavens,  and  judgeth  kings  and  rulers ; 

Lifting  me  unto  glory,  but  laying  low  the  proud  in  everlast- 
ing destruction  in  dishonour,  because  they  knew  Him  not. 

And  now  see,  ye  grandees  of  earth,  the  judgment  of  the 
Lord,  that  He  is  a  great  and  righteous  King,  judging  all  that 
is  under  heaven.  Bless  God,  ye  that  fear  the  Lord  with 
understanding.  For  the  mercy  of  the  Lord  is  on  them  that 
fear  Him,  with  judgment  to  divide  between  the  righteous  and 
the  sinner,  to  recompense  sinners  for  ever  according  to  their 
works,  and  to  show  mercy  to  the  righteous  for  the  oppression 
of  the  sinner,  and  to  recompense  to  the  sinner  what  he  did 
to  the  righteous.  For  the  Lord  is  gracious  to  them  that  call 
upon  Him  in  patience,  to  deal  according  to  His  mercy  with 
His  own,  that  they  may  stand  for  ever  before  Him  in  strength. 
Blessed  be  the  Lord  for  ever  in  the  presence  of  His  servants." 

I  am  not  at  all  sure,  by  the  way,  that  this  psalm  does  not 
give  us  an  example  among  the  Jews  of  something  which  we 
find  in  existence  among  f;he  Christians  from  a  very  early 
period,  certainly,  if  not  fronl)  the  beginning,  namely,  of  inter- 


THE   PRAYER   BOOK   PSALTER  205 

spersing  verses  of  prose  and  psalmody,  the  same  thing  in  the 
small  which  is  done  in  the  large  in  our  Order  for  Morning  and 
Evening  Prayer,  where  we  have  lessons,  psalms,  and  chants 
combined,  which  is  a  modification  of  the  use  existing  at  the 
Reformation. 

And  now  to  pass  on  from  the  psalmody  of  the  Jews  to  that 
of  the  Christians,  the  Gospel  according  to  St.  Luke  gives  us 
several  specimens  of  psalms  composed  by  the  early  Christians 
on  ancient  models :  the  beautiful  Magnificat,  "  My  soul  doth 
magnify  the  Lord";  the  Nunc  Dimittis,  "Lord,  now  lettest 
Thou  Thy  servant  depart  in  peace";  the  angelic  hymn,  "Glory 
to  God  in  the  highest";  and  the  Benedictus,  "Blessed  be  the 
Lord  God  of  Israel."  We  have  also  outside  of  the  Bible 
fragments  of  early  Christian  psalms  and  odes,  some  gnostic, 
some  orthodox,  composed  on  psalm  models.  Here  is  one 
example  from  some  odes  preserved  to  us  in  Coptic  sources — 

"  I  will  confess  to  Thee,  O  Lord,  that  Thou  art  my  God. 

Desert  me  not,  O  Lord,  for  Thou  art  my  hope. 

Thou  hast  given  me  Thy  judgment  freely,  and  I  am  guarded 
by  Thee. 

Let  them  that  pursue  me  fall  and  see  me  not. 

Let  black  clouds  and  mists  of  the  air  cover  their  eyes. 

Let  them  be  darkened,  and  not  see  the  light,  nor  ever  seize 
me. 

Let  their  device  be  turned  to  weakness,  and  what  they 
devised  return  upon  their  own  head. 

They  planned  a  plan,  and  let  it  not  happen  unto  them. 

The  mighty  have  conquered  them,  and  what  they  prepared 
has  fallen  out  ill  for  them. 

But  my  hope  is  on  the  Lord,  and  I  will  not  fear,  for  Thou 
art  my  God  and  my  saviour." 

It  is  evident  that  in  the  first  Christian  centuries  the  Psalter 
was  a  living  force,  and  the  spirit  of  psalmody  not  yet  extinct, 
even  though  all  the  psalms  of  that  date  preserved  to  us  are 
not  of  the  highest  poetical  order. 

We  have  no  liturgies  from  these  earliest  Christian  centuries 


2o6    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

to  show  us  in  detail  how  the  Psalter  was  used  in  the  churches 
at  that  time,  but  only  occasional  hints,  from  which  we  learn 
something  of  the  way  in  which  the  liturgies  that  we  find  in 
existence  at  a  later  date  must  have  been  built  up.  In  the 
Jewish  synagogue  services  there  had  been  Scripture  readings, 
psalms,  prayers,  and  versicles,  or  litanies,  taken  largely  from 
the  Bible.  Among  these  latter  was  a  synagogue  litany,  or 
responsive  prayer,  adapted  from  Psalm  li.  Out  of  this  Jewish 
litany  the  Christians  made  that  universal  and  most  ancient 
litany  of  the  Christian  Church,  the  Kyrie  Eleison — 

"  Lord,  have  mercy  upon  us. 
Christ,  have  mercy  upon  us. 
Lord,  have  mercy  upon  us." 

Similarly,  we  have  reason  to  believe,  the  whole  Christian 
liturgy  and  ritual  grew  out  of  the  Jewish.  In  the  use  of  the 
Psalter  this  is  pre-eminently  true.  At  the  earliest  date  of 
which  we  have  knowledge  we  find  that  the  Psalter  was  ap- 
pointed to  be  sung  in  the  Christian  churches  very  much  as 
it  had  been  sung  by  the  Jews.  There  was  a  special  psalm 
appointed  for  each  day  of  the  week,  a  song  of  gladness  for 
the  first  day,  and  a  song  of  sorrow  and  mourning  for  the  sixth 
day.  This  followed  naturally  from  the  adoption  of  the  seven 
days'  week  from  the  Jews.  The  first  day  was  set  apart  for 
special  religious  services,  as  the  seventh  day  had  been  among 
the  Jews ;  at  the  same  time,  the  seventh  day  preserved  its 
name  and  to  some  extent  its  character  as  the  Sabbath,  being 
observed  as  a  day  of  rest.  As  the  Jews  had  observed  two 
days  of  fasting  in  the  week,  the  second  and  the  fifth,  so  the 
Christians  also  appointed  two  days  of  fasting,  the  fourth  and 
the  sixth.  Of  these  two  days  the  sixth,  Friday,  was  chosen 
because  it  was  the  day  on  which  the  Lord  was  crucified ;  the 
fourth,  Wednesday,  was  chosen  largely,  if  not  altogether,  so 
that  the  Christians  might  fast  on  a  different  day  from  the 
Jews,  as  we  learn  from  various  early  references.  Having  thus 
the  Jewish  system  of  the  week,  with  its  special  feasts  and 
fasts  for  special  days,  it  was  natural  to  adopt  the  Jewish 
system  of  special  psalms  for  each  day  of  the  week.      The 


THE   PRAYER   BOOK   PSALTER  207 

Jewish  practice  of  appointing  special  psalms  for  the  great 
festivals  was  also  followed,  it  would  appear ;  for  the  Christians 
early  commenced  to  celebrate  the  great  events  of  Christian 
life  and  work  by  annual  fasts  and  feasts,  in  this  respect  also 
patterning,  especially  at  the  outset,  upon  Jewish  practice. 

As  far  as  we  can  learn,  then,  the  Christians  at  first  followed 
the  Jewish  method  of  using  the  Psalter  almost,  if  not  quite,  in 
its  entirety.  Regular  psalms  or  selections  of  psalms  were 
appointed  for  the  days  of  the  week  and  the  great  feasts.  In 
the  service  one  psalm,  or  a  portion  of  a  psalm,  or  an  anthem 
made  out  of  sections  of  psalms,  was  sung,  or,  perhaps,  on 
some  special  occasion,  several  psalms  were  united  to  form  a 
selection  and  sung  over  one  doxology.  At  the  end  of  each 
selection,  whether  composed  of  one  psalm,  a  portion  of  a 
psalm,  or  a  group  of  psalms,  a  doxology  was  sung,  after  the 
Jewish  custom.  So  universal  did  this  use  of  doxologies  soon 
become  that  at  a  very  early  date  a  doxology  was  added  even  to 
the  Lord's  Prayer,  and  many  of  the  manuscripts  of  St.  Matthew's 
Gospel  give  that  doxology  as  though  it  were  a  part  of  the  prayer 
itself.  The  words  of  our  Lord  really  end  with  "deliver  us 
from  evil,"  as  we  use  the  prayer  in  the  Litany,  before  the 
Communion  service,  and  in  the  Baptismal  office ;  the  remainder 
of  the  prayer,  as  we  frequently  use  it,  "  for  Thine  is  the  kingdom, 
the  power,  and  the  glory,  for  ever  and  ever,"  is  the  doxology,  to 
which  is  added  an  "  Amen,"  according  to  the  liturgical  use  with 
all  forms  of  prayer  and  praise. 

It  is  in  the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries  after  Christ  that  we 
find  liturgies  beginning  to  assume  definite  and  fixed  forms. 
In  the  Western  Church  St.  Ambrose,  in  the  Eastern  St.  Basil, 
were  great  liturgy  makers.  By  this  time  the  Bible  had  ceased 
to  be  the  live  book  which  it  had  been  to  the  earlier  Christians, 
and  was  beginning  to  receive  that  mechanical  treatment  which 
characterised  the  dark  and  middle  ages,  and  in  consequence 
of  which  it  finally  became  for  a  time  almost  a  lost  writing.  But 
with  the  lack  of  comprehension  of  the  sense  of  Scriptures 
there  went  hand  in  hand  an  increased  reverence  for  the  name 
and  form,  so  that  the  recitation  of  Bible  words  came  to  be 


2o8   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

regarded  as  in  itself  meritorious.  This  showed  itself  most  of 
all  in  the  treatment  of  the  Psalter,  which  was  best  adapted  of 
all  parts  of  Scripture  to  memorising,  and  had  from  the  begin- 
nmg  been  memorised  more  freely  than  other  portions  of  the 
Bible.  Indeed,  we  are  told  that  not  only  at  this  time,  but 
even  earlier,  it  was  not  uncommon  to  find  devout  laymen 
who  could  recite  the  Psalter  through  from  the  beginning  to  the 
end,  and  that  children  began  their  study  of  the  Bible  with  the 
Psalter.  As  used  in  the  Church,  we  find  already  some  slight 
distinctions  between  Eastern  and  Western  use.  The  Eastern 
Church  had,  on  the  whole,  clung  more  closely  than  the  Western 
to  the  Jewish  and  earlier  Christian  method  of  singing  the 
Psalter.  Doxologies  were  used  only  at  the  end  of  each  selection 
of  psalms,  and  not  at  the  end  of  each  individual  psalm.  In 
the  Western  Church,  on  the  other  hand,  it  had  already  become 
the  custom  to  put  a  doxology  after  everything,  and  accordingly 
almost  every  individual  psalm  used  in  the  service  was  followed 
by  a  doxology,  no  matter  how  many  psalms  might  follow  one 
another.  In  the  Eastern  Church  the  early  practice  of  selections, 
adaptations,  the  use  of  parts  of  psalms,  and  the  like,  was  still 
to  some  extent  retained.  In  the  Western  Church  the  psalms, 
as  is  indicated,  among  other  things,  by  the  use  of  the  doxology 
just  referred  to,  had  come  to  be  treated  as  individual  wholes, 
which  it  was  not  allowable  to  modify.  The  Western  Church 
had  also  developed  more  fully,  it  would  appear,  the  idea  of 
using  the  psalms  consecutively  in  the  order  in  which  they 
chance  to  stand  in  the  Psalter. 

In  both  Eastern  and  Western  churches  there  had  grown  up 
the  practice  of  interspersing  antiphons  or  anthems  through 
the  psalm  and  Scripture  readings.  The  intention  of  this  was 
to  glorify  the  Word  of  God.  The  effect  of  it  was  to  render 
that  Word  unintelligible.  The  practice  increased  with  the 
increasing  ignorance  of  the  true  contents  of  the  Bible,  until  at 
last  in  the  Latin  Church,  at  the  period  of  its  densest  ignorance, 
it  was  the  custom  to  sing  an  antiphon  after  each  verse  of  each 
psalm.  This  naturally  increased  enormously  the  length  of  the 
services,  and  as  the  number  of  psalms  used  in  each  service 


THE   PRAYER   BOOK    PSALTER  209 

was  continually  on  the  increase,  owing  to  the  idea  that  there 
was  a  merit  in  saying  as  much  of  the  Psalter  as  possible,  the 
practice  finally  cut  its  own  throat.  Imagine  eighteen  psalms 
appointed  for  one  service,  and  then  more  than  doubled  in  length 
by  the  insertion  of  an  antiphon  after  each  several  psalm  verse, 
and  a  Gloria  after  each  psalm  !  When  this  point  was  reached 
human  endurance  was  taxed  beyond  its  possibilities,  and  a 
reform  took  place,  one  part  of  which  was  the  omission  of  the 
antiphons. 

But  I  am  forestalling  myself.  It  is,  of  course,  with  the  use 
of  the  Latin  Church  that  we  are  particularly  concerned,  since 
it  is  from  this  that  the  Anglican  use  was  derived.  It  was  the 
predominance  of  monasticism  and  the  development  of  the 
hour  services  which  brought  about  the  use  of  the  Psalter 
which  we  have  just  noticed.  In  those  services  it  finally  be- 
came the  rule  to  sing  the  whole  Psalter  through  each  week, 
and  sometimes  more  frequently.  About  twelve  psalms,  in- 
creasing at  one  time  to  eighteen,  as  noted  above,  were 
appointed  for  one  selection,  with  antiphons  interspersed  and 
the  Gloria  after  each  psalm.  In  the  recitation  of  the  Psalter, 
as  in  the  use  of  prayer,  the  mechanical  idea  prevailed.  There 
was  a  virtue  in  the  mere  repetition  of  the  words,  and  to  sing 
the  whole  Psalter  through  each  week  had  a  value  in  itself 
quite  apart  from  any  intelligent  comprehension  of  the  service 
rendered,  or  any  intelligent  participation  in  that  service. 
Nevertheless,  the  old  practice  of  selections  for  special  festivals 
so  far  prevailed  that  the  psalms  were  not  rearranged  altogether 
according  to  the  order  of  their  position  in  the  Psalter.  So  the 
fourth  psalm,  for  instance,  which  is  an  evening  hymn,  was 
recognised  as  such,  and  appointed  to  be  used  at  evening 
service,  while  the  third  psalm,  which  is  the  corresponding 
morning  hymn,  was  appointed  for  the  morning.  So  also  the 
ninety-fifth  psalm  was  removed  altogether  from  the  regular 
course  and  treated  as  an  introduction  to  the  entire  service  of 
psalmody  for  the  day,  a  use  which  seems  to  have  descended 
from  the  earliest  days  of  the  Church.  Again,  psalms  like  the 
fifty-first  were  appointed  for  the  fasting-days  and  seasons.     As 


2IO   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

the  number  of  saints'  days  and  the  observance  of  those  days 
increased,  so  the  system  of  selections  was  developed,  until  at 
last  it  practically  took  the  place  of  the  regular  daily  Psalter  in 
the  monastic  services.  We  have  seen  the  inordinate  length 
of  the  Psalter  as  appointed  for  daily  use;  the  selections  ap- 
pointed for  special  days  were  much  shorter,  and  there  was 
therefore  a  practical  advantage  in  substituting  these  selections 
for  the  daily  use. 

It  would  be  impossible  in  the  space  of  this  chapter  to  point 
out  the  various  uses  of  the  Latin  Church  at  various  times  and 
in  various  places,  and  the  somewhat  conflicting  commands 
of  various  popes  regarding  those  uses.  Suffice  it  to  say  that 
at  the  time  of  the  Reformation  in  England  the  Psalter  was 
theoretically  sung  through  each  week  in  order,  except  only 
such  psalms  of  special  use  as  the  fourth,  fifty-first,  ninety-fifth, 
etc.,  which  were  used  many  times  over;  but  practically  this 
arrangement  according  to  the  days  of  the  week  had  given  way 
to  the  selections  appointed  for  special  days.  Actually  the 
psalms  were  not  sung  through  each  week,  but  only  about 
two-thirds  of  them  were  in  use,  selected  and  arranged  in 
services  according  to  their  supposed  appropriateness  to  the 
occasions  to  be  celebrated. 

It  was  the  services  of  the  hours  which  formed  the  basis  on 
which  the  Morning  and  Evening  Prayer  of  the  English  Prayer 
Book  were  modelled.  We  have  already  seen  the  conservatism 
with  which  the  Psalms  were  treated  in  the  matter  of  transla- 
tion, namely,  that  the  Psalter  was  practically  translated  from 
the  Latin  and  not  from  the  Hebrew,  and  that  the  Latin 
translation  from  which  it  was  translated  was  in  its  turn  not 
a  translation  from  the  Hebrew,  but  from  the  Greek.  The 
same  conservatism  showed  itself  in  a  slightly  different  form 
in  the  arrangement  of  the  Psalms  for  service  use.  The 
Reformers  adopted  the  theory  of  the  mediaeval  Roman  use, 
that  the  whole  Psalter  should  be  sung  through  in  order  within 
a  stated  time,  and  seem  to  have  regarded  all  deviations  from 
the  regular  order  through  the  use  of  selections  for  holy  days, 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  had  practically  taken  the  place  of  the 


THE   PRAYER   BOOK   PSALTER  211 

use  according  to  the  day,  as  an  abuse  which  must  be  corrected. 
At  first  sight  it  is  hard  to  understand  how  they  could  have 
adopted  as  something  essential  an  idea  so  mechanical  and 
so  alien  to  the  practice  of  the  early  Church.  Partly,  doubtless, 
their  attitude  was  due  to  inherited  prejudice  and  the  force 
of  custom,  for  the  most  independent  and  even  the  most 
radical  of  men  are,  after  all,  swayed  in  the  general  conduct 
of  their  lives  and  even  in  the  opinions  which  they  hold  more 
by  custom  and  inheritance  than  by  pure  reason.  The  use 
of  the  whole  Psalter,  and  not  merely  a  part  of  it,  as  in  the  use 
of  the  selections,  had  been  the  cry  of  the  reformers  within  the 
Roman  Church  against  those  who  looked  only  for  that  which 
was  the  more  convenient  and  the  easier,  and  the  English 
Reformers  inherited  those  views  by  virtue  of  being  reformers. 
But  further  than  this,  the  Reformers  stood  for  the  study  and 
use  by  the  people  of  the  whole  Bible,  and  not  merely  of 
selected  portions,  and  in  the  matter  of  the  Psalms  it  doubtless 
seemed  to  them  desirable  that  the  whole  book  should  in  some 
way  be  put  in  the  mouth  of  the  people.  No  other  way  was 
so  well  adapted  to  make  them  familiar  with  the  whole  Psalter 
as  to  order  it  to  be  read  through  in  order. 

But  in  actual  practice  it  was  impossible  to  sing  the  Psalter 
through  once  a  week,  unless  people  gave  up  their  business, 
shut  themselves  up  in  monasteries,  and  devoted  themselves 
to  that  sort  of  thing.  Consequently,  in  order  to  carry  out  the 
comparatively  recent  theory  of  saying  through  the  whole 
Psalter  in  order  from  beginning  to  end,  they  were  compelled 
to  abandon  the  ancient  and  universal  plan  of  the  arrangement 
of  psalms  according  to  a  weekly  cycle.  For  the  ancient  and 
time-honoured  weekly  cycle  which  the  Christian  Church  had 
inherited  from  the  Jews,  and  which  prevailed  in  every  branch 
of  the  Christian  Church,  east  and  west  alike,  they  substituted 
a  brand-new  monthly  arrangement,  a  thing  hitherto  unknown 
in  Christendom.  This  monthly  arrangement,  moreover, 
assumed  a  form  far  stiffer  in  its  adherence  to  the  order  of  the 
psalms  in  the  Psalter — which  is  in  the  main  a  haphazard 
arrangement   as   far  as    subjects    are    concerned,   depending 


212    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

chiefly  on  the  date  of  composition  of  the  psalm  or  its  adoption 
into  the  Psalter — than  any  arrangement  heretofore  adopted. 
It  is  true  that  selections  were  retained  for  a  few  of  the 
greatest  feasts  of  the  Church,  but  for  all  the  other  days  of 
the  year,  Sundays  and  week-days  alike,  they  ordered  that  the 
psalms  should  be  said  in  rotation,  with  no  reference  what- 
soever to  the  Church  seasons  or  the  teaching  of  the  day. 
Friday  psalms  might  fall  on  Sunday,  and  Sunday  psalms  on 
Friday ;  henceforth  all  was  to  be  determined  by  chance.  The 
important  thing  was  to  have  the  Psalter  said ;  the  sense  of  the 
psalms  was  a  very  secondary  matter.  Accordingly  the  Psalter 
was  divided  into  sixty  sections,  as  nearly  equal  as  they  could 
be  made  without  dividing  individual  psalms  other  than  Psalm 
cxix.  These  divisions  were  allotted  in  the  order  in  which 
they  came  to  the  days  of  the  month,  two  consecutive  divisions 
being  assigned  to  each  day,  one  for  the  morning  and  one  for 
the  evening.  And  so  important  did  the  matter  of  the  division 
of  the  psalms  into  exactly  equal  portions  and  their  arrange- 
ment for  consecutive  use  according  to  the  days  of  the  month 
appear,  that  the  Reformers  could  not  even  consider  the 
possibility  of  assigning  an  evening  hymn  to  the  evening  rather 
than  to  the  morning.  Psalm  iv.  chanced  to  fall  in  the  equal 
portion  which  had  been  cut  off  for  the  first  morning,  and, 
therefore,  in  the  morning  it  must  be  sung.  Similarly  the  fact 
that  certain  psalms  had  long  been  appropriated  to  special  use 
as  chants,  like  the  Vefiite,  Psalm  xcv.,  did  not  prevent  them 
from  ordering  that  those  chants  should  also  be  sung  as  psalms 
in  the  regular  sections  of  the  Psalter  appointed  for  the  thirty 
,  mornings  and  the  thirty  evenings  of  the  month.  Ruthless 
uniformity  was  to  be  henceforth  the  rule. 

The  English  Reformers,  moreover,  had  small  conception  of 
the  Psalms  as  hymns  or  songs ;  to  them  they  were  a  certain 
section  of  the  Bible,  the  same  as  every  other  section,  being,  so 
to  speak,  neither  prose  nor  verse,  but  Bible.  In  the  first 
Prayer  Book,  of  1549,  we  read  this  complaint:  "Notwith- 
standing that  the  ancient  fathers  had  divided  the  Psalms 
into  seven  portions,  whereof  every  one  was  called  a  nocturne, 


THE   PRAYER   BOOK   PSALTER  213 

now  of  late  time  a  few  have  been  daily  said,  and  the  rest  daily 
omitted."  And  so,  as  said,  they  provided  that  the  whole 
Psalter  should  be  recited  in  the  daily  services  in  the  course 
of  the  month.  By  this  arrangement  five  or  six  psalms  on 
an  average  were  to  be  recited  daily,  and  as  the  Sundays  fall 
on  different  days  each  month,  so  the  Sunday  churchgoer, 
provided  always  that  he  went  to  church  twice  each  Sunday, 
would  in  course  of  time  recite  the  whole  Psalter.  The  only 
modification  of  this  system  of  monthly  repetition  according 
to  the  days  of  the  month  was,  as  already  noted,  the  appoint- 
ment of  special  psalms  for  Christmas,  Easter,  Ascension  Day, 
and  Whit  Sunday.  The  Psalter  was  not  printed  in  this 
Prayer  Book,  but  a  calendar  for  the  reading  of  the  Psalms 
was  placed  immediately  before  the  calendar  for  the  reading 
of  the  rest  of  the  Scriptures.  It  was  intended  that  the  whole 
Bible  should  be  read  through  in  the  churches,  and  the  Psalter 
was  ordered  to  be  read  likewise.  Apparently  it  was  not 
regarded  as  a  hymn-book  in  this  use.  On  the  other  hand, 
in  the  Prayer  Book  of  1549  there  are  printed  along  with  the 
Collects,  Epistles,  and  Gospels,  Introits,  differing  for  each 
Sunday  or  feast  day,  each  introit  consisting  of  one  psalm. 
In  this  use  the  psalms  are  treated  as  hymns,  and  in  reahty 
this  use  of  psalms  as  introits  in  the  Prayer  Book  of  1549 
is  much  more  in  keeping  with  the  original  intention  and 
purpose  of  the  Psalter,  and  with  its  use  in  the  early  Church, 
than  is  the  calendar  use,  formulated  for  the  first  time  in 
the  same  Prayer  Book,  by  which  the  Psalter  is  ordered  to 
be  read  through  once  in  each  month. 

The  second  Prayer  Book  of  Edward  VI.,  the  Prayer  Book 
of  1552,  omitted  the  introits,  and  left  nothing  behind  but  the 
calendar  use.  It  may  be  said  that  this  method  of  using  the 
Psalter  is  characteristic  of  the  tendency  manifested  at  this 
period,  to  exalt  the  Bible,  not  by  a  study  and  use  of  its 
contents  in  the  spirit  in  which  it  was  composed,  but  mechanic- 
ally, as  though  it  were  a  thing  divine  in  its  outward  form,  in 
its  letter.  In  keeping  with  this  general  method  of  treatment 
we  may  also  observe  that  where  psalms  are  to  be  used  as 


214   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

chants  a  whole  psalm  is  invariably  used;  never  mind  how 
ill  adapted  individual  verses  of  the  psalms  may  be,  they  are 
never  omitted;  nor  are  portions  of  one  psalm  added  to 
another,  practices  common  in  the  early  Church,  when  both 
of  these  methods  were  freely  used  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining 
chants  and  anthems  thoroughly  adapted  to  the  occasion.  The 
inviolability  and  separateness  of  the  individual  psalms  was  also 
further  emphasised  by  the  adoption  of  the  later  Western  use  of 
singing  the  Gloria  after  each  psalm,  as  over  against  the  earlier 
Eastern  use  of  a  doxology  only  after  each  selection  or  group 
of  psalms.  In  the  Prayer  Book  of  1559  three  psalms  for 
chant  use  are  added  as  alternates  in  Morning  and  Evening 
Prayer.  The  succeeding  editions  of  the  Prayer  Book  retain 
the  calendar  use  of  the  Psalter  unchanged,  and  in  general 
the  use  of  the  same  psalms  as  chants,  with,  however,  some 
shght  variations.  So,  for  example,  in  the  Prayer  Book  of  1637, 
that  of  Laud  and  Charles  L,  the  beautiful  twenty-third  psalm 
is  substituted  for  the  Benedicite  as  the  alternate  to  the  Te  Deum 
in  Morning  Prayer.  It  was  in  1662  that  the  English  Prayer 
Book  assumed  its  final  form.  At  that  time  Psalms  xxxix. 
and  xc.  were  added  to  the  burial  service,  which  had  been 
without  any  psalmody  whatever  since  the  first  Prayer  Book 
of  Edward  VI.,  which  appointed  for  the  burial  service  Psalms 
cxvi.,  cxlvi.,  and  cxxxix.  In  the  Prayer  Book  of  1662  we  find 
also  special  psalms  provided  for  Ash  Wednesday  and  Good 
Friday,  making  six  days  instead  of  four  on  which  the  regular 
monthly  order  has  to  be  broken.  It  is  in  this  Prayer  Book 
also  that  the  Psalter  first  appears  within  the  covers.  It  be- 
came necessary  at  this  time  to  print  it  as  a  part  of  the  Prayer 
Book,  because  while  heretofore  the  translation  of  the  Great 
Bible  had  been  in  use  for  all  reading  of  the  Scriptures  in 
church  services,  from  this  time  forward  it  was  provided  that 
the  King  James  Version  should  be  substituted,  except  only 
in  the  Psalter,  where  the  old  version  was  to  be  retained  for 
reasons  already  noticed.  The  King  James  Bible  accordingly 
became  the  Church  Bible,  and  the  Great  Bible  passed  out 
of  use,  becoming  speedily  obsolete.      As  a  mere  matter  of 


THE   PRAYER   BOOK   PSALTER  215 

practical  convenience,  therefore,  it  was  necessary  to  print 
the  Psalter  in  the  Prayer  Book,  in  order  that  it  might  be 
accessible  to  the  people,  who  could  no  longer  find  it  in  .their 
Bibles. 

And  now,  having  traced  the  arrangement  of  the  Psalter  in 
the  Anglican  use  down  to  its  final  appearance  in  the  Prayer 
Book  of  1662,  let  us  examine  briefly  the  method  in  which 
the  psalms  are  arranged  for  daily  use  in  the  English  Prayer 
Book  and  some  of  the  most  glaring  of  the  incongruities 
resulting  therefrom.  It  has  already  been  pointed  out  that 
the  Psalter  was  divided  by  the  English  Reformers  into  equal 
sections  for  use  in  Morning  and  Evening  Prayer.  As  there 
are  thirty  days  to  a  month,  these  sections  consequently  number 
sixty,  and  as  there  are  one  hundred  and  fifty  psalms,  on 
an  average  two  and  a  half  psalms  would  be  appointed  for 
use  each  morning  and  the  same  number  each  evening;  but, 
as  the  psalms  are  very  uneven  in  length  and  the  object 
was  to  make  the  appointed  portions  as  nearly  as  possible 
equal,  actually  as  many  as  five  or  six  short  psalms  were  some- 
times allotted  to  one  portion,  whereas,  on  the  other  hand,  Psalm 
cxix.,  on  account  of  its  length,  was  divided  up  and  distributed 
over  several  days. 

The  only  effort  that  was  made  in  the  arrangement  of  the 
Anglican  Psalter  was  to  have  the  appointed  portions  as  nearly 
equal  as  might  be  without  dividing  any  psalm  other  than 
cxix.  Accordingly,  in  the  morning  Psalter  for  the  first  day,  we 
have  five  psalms  appointed  to  be  used,  which,  as  anyone  will 
see  who  reads  them,  have  no  connexion  in  thought  or  outward 
form  with  one  another,  except  only  that  they  are  psalms.  The 
effect  to  one  who  sings  the  psalms  with  some  conception  of 
their  sense  and  purpose  is  much  the  same  as  if  one  were  to 
make  a  selection  of  the  first  five  hymns  in  the  Hymnal  (Ameri- 
can) according  to  the  index  of  first  lines,  namely,  "A  charge 
to  keep  I  have,"  *'A  few  more  years  shall  roll,"  "A  tower  of 
strength  our  God,"  "Abide  with  me,  fast  falls  the  eventide," 
"Above  the  clear  blue  sky,"  and  sing  them  through  in  this 
chance  order,  with  only  a  doxology  between,  as  the  praise 


2i6   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

service  in  Morning  Prayer.  This  illustration  is  all  the  more 
pertinent,  because  the  fourth  of  the  five  psalms  appointed  for 
the  Morning  Prayer  of  the  first  day  is  an  evening  hymn,  the 
use  of  which  in  Morning  Prayer  is  precisely  as  intelligent  as 
would  be  the  use  of  "Abide  with  me,  fast  falls  the  eventide" 
in  the  same  place.  The  Psalter  for  that  evening  is  likewise 
infelicitous  in  arrangement.  Psalms  vi.  and  vii.,  with  which  it 
begins,  are  supplicatory,  trustful  petitions.  These  two  would 
in  themselves  form  an  excellent  selection,  but  Psalm  viii. 
ruins  the  harmony  of  thought.  It  is  a  grand  hymn  of  praise 
to  the  Creator  of  Heaven ;  and  to  sing  these  three  together 
as  a  single  act  of  praise,  is,  to  illustrate  once  more  from  the 
American  Hymnal,  as  though  "  Blest  be  the  tie  that  binds," 
"Father,  whate'er  of  earthly  bfiss,"  and  "All  hail  the  power 
of  Jesus'  Name,"  were  made  into  one  selection  and  ordered  to 
be  sung  together. 

Turn  now  to  the  Psalter  for  the  fourth  day.  Morning  Prayer. 
This  begins  with  a  beautiful  composite  psalm,  the  nineteenth. 
Now,  Psalm  xix.  is  a  selection  in  itself,  and  well  illustrates  the 
method  of  composing  selections  of  psalms  or  anthems  for 
worship  among  the  Jews.  The  first  part,  earlier  in  date  by 
some  centuries  than  the  second,  is  a  short  metre  psalm,  prais- 
ing God  the  Creator  as  He  manifests  Himself  in  the  daily 
course  of  the  sun.  The  second  part  is  a  later  psalm,  which 
has  been  added  to  the  first.  It  is  in  long  metre,  of  the  so- 
called  kmah  or  lament  verse,  like  the  metre  of  Lamentations, 
and  is  a  hymn  of  praise  to  God  the  Law  Giver  as  He  manifests 
Himself  in  His  wonderful  and  glorious  Law.  The  connexion 
of  thought  between  the  two  parts  is  manifest  and  most  sugges- 
tive, and  the  marked  difference  of  metre  adds  to  the  grandeur 
of  the  composition  by  preserving  and  emphasising  the  integrity 
of  each  part.  The  whole  forms  one  of  the  noblest  anthems  of 
the  Psalter,  and  is  a  complete  and  well-rounded  act  of  worship 
in  itself.  But  in  the  Psalter  for  the  fourth  day,  Morning 
Prayer,  this  magnificent  anthem  has  hung  on  to  it  two  battle 
hymns,  the  one.  Psalm  xx.,  a  petition  for  the  triumph  of  the 
king  in  war,  the  other.  Psalm  xxi.,  a  Te  Dewn  after  victory. 


THE   PRAYER   BOOK   PSALTER  217 

The  two  psalms  are  fine  in  themselves,  but  sung  together  with 
the  nineteenth  as  one  selection  or  anthem,  for  that  is  about 
what  a  selection  of  psalms  amounts  to  when  sung,  each  de- 
stroys the  effect  of  the  other,  because  there  is  absolutely  no 
connexion  in  thought  between  them.  They  should  form  two 
separate  selections.  The  Psalter  for  the  same  evening  is  equally 
unhappy,  Psalm  xxii.  being  an  anguished  cry  out  of  suffering, 
appropriate  to  such  a  day  as  Good  Friday,  for  which  it  was 
the  introit  in  the  Prayer  Book  of  1549,  while  Psalm  xxiii.  is  a 
gentle,  sweet,  peaceful  song  of  the  man  at  rest  in  the  bosom 
of  God.  They  go  together  in  precisely  the  same  way  that 
"  Weary  of  earth,  and  laden  with  my  sin,"  and  "  Jesus,  tender 
shepherd,  hear  me,"  go  together. 

The  Psalter  for  the  fifth  morning  is  equally  objectionable 
from  an  artistic  and  liturgical  point  of  view.  Psalm  xxiv.  is  a 
noble  processional  hymn,  adapted  to  services  of  dedication. 
Psalm  xxvi.  is  an  introit  prepared  for  the  approach  to  the 
altar,  and  might,  therefore,  be  associated  with  Psalm  xxiv.  in 
one  selection.  But  the  two  are  separated  by  Psalm  xxv., 
which  is  a  deeply  penitential  hymn  of  the  nation,  or  com- 
munity, or  individual  in  distress,  calling  on  God  to  be  mindful 
of  His  tender  mercies  and  loving-kindnesses  of  old  and  turn 
again  and  be  gracious.  How  would  it  sound  to  combine  into 
one  anthem  the  three  hymns,  "Onward,  Christian  soldiers," 
"Saviour,  when  in  dust  to  Thee,"  and  "The  Church's  one 
foundation"?  It  is  substantially  the  same  thing  which  has 
been  done  in  the  Psalter  for  the  fifth  morning. 

In  the  Psalter  for  the  eighth  evening  Psalm  xli.  is  used, 
with  the  doxology  of  the  first  book  attached  to  it,  as  though 
it  were  a  component  part  of  the  psalm.  I  have  already 
pointed  out  that  verse  13  of  this  psalm  as  printed  in  our 
Prayer  Books:  "Blessed  be  the  Lord  God  of  Israel;  world 
without  end.  Amen,"  is  no  part  of  the  psalm  whatever,  but 
a  doxology  written  after  all  hymns  in  the  first  book,  to  be 
sung  with  any  of  them,  or  with  any  selection  of  them  in 
worship.  Following  Psalm  xli.,  the  closing  psalm  of  the  first 
book,  in  the  Psalter  for  the  eighth  evening  are  Psalms  xlii. 


2i8   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

and  xliii.  I  have  already  pointed  out  what  is  universally 
acknowledged,  that  these  two  psalms  constitute  together  one 
song.  This  song  consists  of  three  stanzas,  each  stanza  ending 
with  the  same  refrain  (curiously  differentiated  in  our  Prayer 
Book  translation) :  "Why  art  thou  so  heavy,  O  my  soul?  And 
why  art  thou  so  disquieted  within  me?  O  put  thy  trust  in 
God :  For  I  will  yet  give  Him  thanks,  which  is  the  help  of 
my  countenance  and  my  God."  These  three  stanzas,  com- 
posing as  they  do  one  poem,  should  be  treated  either  as 
three  psalms  or  as  one,  and  not  as  two,  that  arrangement  in 
the  Hebrew  Psalter  being  a  mere  accident.  Moreover,  this 
psalm,  "  Like  as  the  hart,"  consisting  of  Psalms  xHi.  and  xliii., 
has  no  connexion  in  thought  whatsoever  with  Psalm  xli.,  and 
should  rather  constitute  a  selection  by  itself. 

The  Psalter  for  the  ninth  morning  is  singularly  infelicitous. 
Psalm  xliv.,  the  first  in  the  Psalter  appointed  for  that  day,  is 
itself  a  composite  psalm.  The  first  part,  verses  1-9,  is  a 
psalm  of  victory,  describing  what  great  things  God  has  done 
for  His  people.  The  end  of  this  original  poem  is  marked  in 
the  Hebrew  by  a  Selah.  To  this  earlier  triumph-song  was 
added  later,  in  a  period  of  sore  distress,  a  piteous  cry  to  God 
to  wake  out  of  sleep  and  deliver  His  people.  The  whole  is  a 
grand  anthem,  and  would  make  a  sufficient  selection  in  itself, 
consisting  as  it  does  of  two  songs  combined  in  one.  The  next 
psalm  in  the  section  appointed  for  the  Psalter  for  the  ninth 
morning  is  a  marriage  hymn,  about  as  inappropriate  a  com- 
panion for  Psalm  xliv.  as  could  be  found.  Psalm  xlvi.,  again, 
is  a  psalm  of  triumph,  celebrating  God's  might  in  overthrowing 
the  heathen  and  subduing  the  earth.  It  has  no  appropriate- 
ness, in  connexion  with  either  Psalm  xHv.  or  xlv.  To 
illustrate  once  more  from  the  hymn-book,  the  Psalter  for  the 
ninth  morning  is  in  connexion  of  thought  as  though  one  were 
to  combine  together  the  hymns,  "  In  the  hour  of  trial,  Jesus, 
plead  for  me,"  "To  Thee,  O  Father,  throned  on  high,  Our 
marriage  hymn  we  duly  sing,"  and  "  Thou,  God,  all  glory, 
honour,  power."  The  Psalter  for  the  ninth  evening,  if  not 
quite  so  infelicitous  as  that  for  the  morning,  is,  nevertheless, 


THE   PRAYER   BOOK   PSALTER  219 

distinctly  incongruous.  Psalms  xlvii.  and  xlviii.,  with  which  it 
begins,  go  well  together,  both  of  them  being  songs  of  triumph. 
Psalm  xlvi.,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  is  sadly  out  of  place  in 
the  Psalter  for  the  morning,  would  go  admirably  with  these 
two  psalms.  On  the  other  hand,  Psalm  xlix.,  which  is  joined 
with  them  in  the  present  arrangement  of  the  Psalter  for  the 
ninth  evening,  is  most  unfortunately  placed.  Psalms  xlvii. 
and  xlviii.  are  triumph  songs  to  God  as  king  and  conqueror, 
while  Psalm  xlix.  is  a  meditative,  rather  melancholy  discussion 
of  the  problem  of  evil.  To  realise  the  effect  of  this  try  in  its 
place  a  selection  composed  of  the  three  hymns,  "  Hark !  the 
sound  of  holy  voices,"  "Ten  thousand  times  ten  thousand," 
and  "  Whate'er  my  God  ordains  is  right." 

Turning  to  the  fourteenth  day,  you  will  find  that  the  two 
psalms  which  compose  the  Psalter  appointed  for  that  morning, 
Ixxi.  and  Ixxii.,  go  together  about  as  well  as  the  two  hymns, 
"  Saviour,  when  in  dust  to  Thee  "  and  "  All  hail  the  power  of 
Jesus'  Name."  One  is  a  litany-like  lament,  and  the  other  a 
triumphant  outburst,  a  prophetic  picture  of  the  Messiah  and 
His  kingdom.  What  are  printed  as  the  last  two  verses  of  the 
latter  of  these  psalms  might,  by  the  way,  be  with  equal  appro- 
priateness attached  to  the  end  of  any  of  the  psalms  from  xlii. 
to  Ixxii.,  or  to  any  selections  made  from  these  psalms.  Those 
verses  are  not  part  of  Psalm  Ixxii.,  but  a  doxology  meant  to  be 
sung  after  any  psalm  of  the  second  book. 

In  the  Psalter  for  the  sixteenth  morning  we  have 
Psalm  Ixxix.,  which  is  an  almost  despairing  cry  for  help  out 
of  the  bitterest  distress  of  persecution,  a  companion-piece  to 
Psalm  Ixxiv.  This  is  followed  by  Psalm  Ixxx.,  the  song  of  the 
ruined  vineyard,  a  prayer  for  the  deliverance  of  Israel,  wasted, 
devoured,  burnt  with  fire  and  cut  down.  While  the  proper 
companion-piece  of  Psalm  Ixxix.  is  Ixxiv.,  nevertheless 
there  is  no  incongruity  in  the  juxtaposition  of  Ixxix.  and 
Ixxx.  But  Psalm  Ixxxi.,  which  has  been  joined  with  these  two 
to  compose  the  Psalter  for  the  sixteenth  morning,  strikes  an 
entirely  different  note,  quite  out  of  tune  with  that  of  those 
two  psalms.     It  is  a  "merry  song,"  a  "cheerful  noise"  unto 


220   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

the  "God  of  our  strength."  The  Psalter  for  the  evening  of 
the  same  day  is  equally  incongruous,  consisting  as  it  does 
of  two  psalms,  Ixxxii.  and  Ixxxiii.,  teUing  of  God's  judgment 
of  the  heathen,  and  two  psalms,  Ixxxiv.  and  Ixxxv.,  of  a 
totally  opposite  nature,  gentle  and  peaceful  in  tone.  Of  these 
latter  Ixxxiv.  is  a  sweet  Temple  song,  "O,  how  amiable  are 
Thy  dwellings,"  and  Ixxxv.  a  soft-toned  hymn  of  thanks- 
giving to  God  for  deliverance  out  of  captivity.  The  Psalter 
for  the  sixteenth  evening  should  surely  have  been  divided  into 
two  sections. 

In  the  Psalter  for  the  seventeenth  morning  we  have  three 
psalms,  the  first  of  which  is  a  petition  for  deliverance  out  of 
affliction,  and  the  third,  the  one  utterly  despairing  song  of  the 
Psalter,  a  cry  out  of  distress,  through  which  glimmers  not  a 
single  ray  of  hope.  If  the  first  and  last  of  these  psalms, 
Ixxxvi.  and  Ixxxviii.,  might  fitly  be  joined  together,  certainly 
Psalm  Ixxxvii.  intervening  destroys  the  connexion  of  thought 
and  utters  an  inharmonious  note,  for  it  is  glad  and  triumphant. 
The  Psalter  for  that  evening  consists  of  Psalm  Ixxxix.,  at  the 
end  of  which,  as  though  it  were  part  of  verse  50  of  the  psalm, 
is  printed  the  doxology  of  the  third  book:  "Praised  be  the 
Lord  for  evermore.  Amen,  and  Amen,"  which,  as  already 
pointed  out  in  the  case  of  the  doxologies  for  the  first  and 
second  books,  belongs  as  much  to  any  of  the  psalms  preceding 
it,  from  Ixxiii.  onward,  as  to  this  psalm. 

The  Psalter  for  the  twenty-fourth  morning  consists  of  Psalms 
cxvi.,  cxvii.,  and  cxviii.  Psalm  cxvii.  is  in  reality  a  doxology, 
and  consists  of  but  two  verses.  Everyone  must  have  felt  the 
awkwardness  of  singing  a  Gloria  Patri  both  before  and  after 
this  short  psalm,  which  is  itself  a  doxology.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  Psalms  cxvi.  and  cxvii.  alone  constituted  this  Psalter, 
what  a  grand  close  Psalm  cxvii.  would  make,  provided  the 
Gloria  Patri  were  not  sung  between  the  two,  but  only  at  the 
close  of  both !  This  psalm  might  also  be  used  after  several  of 
the  preceding  psalms,  after  the  manner  in  which  it  seems 
to  have  been  used  among  the  Hebrews.  Psalm  cxviii.,  which 
is  part  of  this  Psalter,  would  be  far  more  effective  as  a  selection 


THE   PRAYER   BOOK   PSALTER  221 

by  itself.  It  is  probably,  on  the  whole,  the  most  effective 
processional  in  the  whole  Book  of  Psalms. 

The  Psalter  for  the  twenty-eighth  evening  is  one  of  those 
offensively  incongruous  arrangements  which  force  themselves 
on  the  attention.  Psalms  cxxxvi.  and  cxxxviii.  are  glad 
triumphant  hymns ;  Psalm  cxxxvii.,  which  intervenes  between 
the  two,  is  a  very  sad  and  very  beautiful  lamentation  of  the 
captives  sitting  down  and  weeping  by  the  waters  of  Babylon. 
The  effect  of  the  combination  on  the  mind  of  anyone  who 
considers  at  all  what  are  the  words  which  he  is  singing  is  the 
same  as  it  would  be  if  he  were  to  hear  sung  together  as  one 
whole  the  hymns,  "  Hark !  the  herald  angels  sing,"  "  Forty 
days  and  forty  nights,"  and  "  Holy,  Holy,  Holy !  Lord  God 
Almighty." 

These  notes  on  the  infelicities  of  the  Anglican  arrangement 
of  singing  the  psalms  in  equal  portions,  according  as  they 
happen  to  come,  are  very  incomplete,  only  a  few  of  the  most 
glaring  cases  having  been  selected  for  comment ;  but  these 
are  probably  enough  to  show  that  this  arrangement  is  capable 
of  improvement. 

Another  incongruity  often  results  from  this  arrangement ; 
namely,  a  want  of  harmony  between  the  Psalter  and  the 
remainder  of  the  service.  The  Anglican  Psalter  is  arranged 
according  to  the  days  of  the  month,  and  almost  entirely 
ignores  the  ecclesiastical  year,  recognising  by  separate  selections 
only  Christmas,  Ash  Wednesday,  Good  Friday,  Easter  Day, 
Ascension  Day,  and  Whit  Sunday.  But  the  services  of  the 
Church  in  every  other  particular  are  arranged  according  to  the 
Church  Year.  We  have  a  special  Collect,  Epistle,  and  Gospel 
for  each  Sunday,  and  the  Lessons  from  both  Old  and  New 
Testament  are  very  carefully  chosen  on  the  same  system,  with 
a  view  to  enforcing  from  as  many  sides  as  possible  the  lesson 
of  the  day.  That  lesson  may  be  of  the  most  joyful  and 
triumphant  character,  as  in  the  Easter  season,  or  in  the  octave 
of  Christmas,  or  on  Trinity  Sunday,  in  which  case  the  Epistle 
and  Gospel,  the  Lessons  for  the  day,  and  even  the  hymns  and 
anthems  chosen  to  be  sung,  are  of  the  same  character ;  but 


222    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

the  day  of  the  month  may  be  the  fourth,  in  which  case, 
according  to  the  AngUcan  arrangement,  the  Good  Friday 
psalm,  "  My  God,  my  God,  look  Thou  upon  me,"  must  be 
sung  in  the  Psalter;  or  the  tenth,  and  the  Miserere  must 
be  used.  Or,  vice  versa,  you  may  be  in  the  midst  of  Passion 
week,  where  the  whole  tone  of  the  services  is  meant  to  be 
that  of  the  Miserere,  and  lo  and  behold !  it  is  the  thirtieth  day 
of  the  month,  and  the  Psalter  bursts  out  in  a  veritable  paean 
of  mirth  and  gladness. 

There  is  another  class  of  incongruities,  which  is  the  result 
of  the  failure  to  appreciate  the  meaning  of  the  psalms  and  of 
a  worship  of  the  letter,  which  compelled  the  use  of  each  psalm 
just  as  it  stood  without  the  change  of  one  jot  or  tittle.  It 
is  that  spirit  which  shows  itself  in  the  treatment  of  Psalm  xcv., 
the  Vcfiite,  which  is  sung  every  day  of  the  year.  It  might  be 
supposed  that  this  was  quite  enough  use  for  this  psalm,  and  it 
was  held  to  be  enough  in  all  uses  before  the  Anglican ;  but, 
apparently  on  the  theory  that  there  is  some  virtue  in  its  repeti- 
tion in  course  immediately  after  Psalm  xciv.  and  immediately 
before  Psalm  xcvi.,  the  Anglican  Reformers  directed  that,  after 
being  used  as  a  chant  every  other  day,  on  the  nineteenth 
day  it  should  be  said  in  course  with  the  other  psalms.  The 
same  was  done  with  the  other  canticles.  Never  mind  how 
frequently  they  may  be  used  as  canticles,  they  must  also  be 
used  in  course  in  the  Psalter,  as  though  there  were  some 
special  virtue  in  repeating  them  in  their  order  of  number  as 
they  happen  to  stand  in  the  Psalter.  This  curious  double  use 
is,  I  believe,  exclusively  Anglican.  Similarly,  psalms  which 
appear  twice  in  the  Psalter  are  sung  twice  over  during  the 
month,  Psalm  xiv.  being  sung  in  the  Psalter  for  the  second 
morning,  and  then  again  as  Psalm  liii.  in  the  Psalter  for  the 
tenth  evening;  while  Psalm  Ixx.,  which  has  already  appeared 
as  verses  16-21  of  Psalm  xl.  and  been  sung  in  the  Psalter  for 
the  eighth  morning,  is  sung  a  second  time  in  the  Psalter  for 
the  thirteenth  evening.  Psalm  cviii.,  which  forms  part  of  the 
Psalter  for  the  twenty-second  evening,  is  an  anthem  composed 
of  verses  8-12  of  Psalm  Ivii.,  and  verses  5-12  of  Psalm  Ix., 


THE   PRAYER   BOOK   PSALTER  223 

and  had,  therefore,  been  already  sung  in  the  Psalters  for  the 
eleventh  morning  and  evening  respectively.  It  may  be  added, 
however,  that  in  the  case  of  all  these  duplicates  the  two 
translations  in  the  Anglican  Psalter  are  so  different  that  they 
may  well  pass  for  different  psalms. 

A  more  serious  result  of  the  failure  to  understand  the 
Psalter  on  the  part  of  the  English  Reformers  is  the  treatment 
of  rubrics  and  the  Hke  as  parts  of  the  psalms  in  which  they 
occur.  We  have  already  seen  the  manner  in  which  the 
doxologies  of  the  first,  second,  and  third  books  have  been 
attached  to  the  individual  psalms  which  they  happen  to  follow, 
as  though  they  were  a  component  part  of  those  psalms.  The 
doxology  of  the  fourth  book  will  be  found  at  the  close  of 
Psalm  cvi.  It  is  identical  with  the  doxology  at  the  close  of 
the  first  book,  although  in  the  Prayer  Book  Psalter  that 
identity  is  obscured  by  a  difference  of  translation.  It  seems 
to  have  been  the  commonest  form  of  doxology,  and  we  find  it 
used  again  at  the  close  of  the  dedicatory  psalm  in  i  Chronicles 
xvi.  36,  where  we  are  also  told  that  "all  the  people  said, 
Ameti.'^  As  written  at  the  close  of  Psalm  xH.,  the  Ame7t  is 
printed  immediately  after  the  doxology.  As  written  at  the 
close  of  Psalm  cvi.,  the  Amen  is  preceded  by  the  rubric,  "  and 
let  all  the  people  say."  In  the  Psalter  as  arranged  for  the 
Prayer  Book  the  doxology  is  printed  as  part  of  Psalm  cvi., 
and  the  rubric  is  incorporated  with  the  doxology,  so  that  we 
sing  psalm,  doxology,  rubric,  and  A77ien  all  in  one  breath  as  it 
were.  It  seems  scarcely  desirable  to  chant  the  rubrics  in  our 
churches.  Certainly  we  should  never  think  of  commencing 
the  Venite  by  singing,  "  Then  shall  be  said  or  sung  this  Psalm 
following";  and  there  is  no  more  reason  for  prefacing  the 
Amen  at  the  close  of  this  doxology  with  the  rubric,  "  Let  all 
the  people  say." 

There  is  a  somewhat  similar  rubric  in  Psalm  cxviii.,  which 
forms  part  of  the  Psalter  for  the  twenty -fourth  morning, 
according  to  the  Anglican  arrangement.  As  already  pointed 
out,  this  is  a  processional  hymn,  intended  for  use  at  some 
temple  service  and  sacrifice.     In  the  second  half  of  verse  27, 


224   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP- 

after  the  altar  has  been  reached  and  the  priest  is  ready  to 
proceed  to  the  sacrifice,  following  the  words,  "  God  is  the 
Lord  Who  hath  showed  us  light,"  comes  a  rubric,  directing 
that  at  this  point  the  sacrifice  should  be  bound  with  cords 
to  the  horns  of  the  altar.  In  the  original  this  rubric  is  the 
barest  prose.  In  the  Prayer  Book  version  it  has  been  trans- 
lated so  as  to  have  some  resemblance  to  poetry,  and  its  true 
nature  being  thus  obscured,  it  was  printed  and  sung  as  part  of 
the  psalm.  To  one  who  follows  the  sense  the  effect  is  much 
as  though  the  rubrics  by  the  side  of  the  prayer  of  Consecration 
in  the  Communion  service  were  to  be  recited  as  component 
parts  of  that  prayer. 

But  perhaps  the  most  curious  case  of  printing  the  rubrics 
and  similar  directions  as  part  of  the  psalm  occurs  in  Psalm 
Ixviii.,  which  forms  the  Psalter  for  the  thirteenth  morning. 
It  is  a  grand  psalm,  taken  as  a  whole,  but  I  think  that  every- 
one must  have  felt  that  there  are  verses  in  it  which  are  quite 
unintelligible  to  him.  Especially  is  this  true  with  verses  12, 
13,  and  14,  which  appear  to  have  no  connexion  with  one 
another  or  with  the  remainder  of  the  psalm.  Verse  1 1  reads  : 
"The  Lord  gave  the  word  :  great  was  the  company  of  the 
preachers."  The  verses  following  this  read :  "  Kings  with 
their  armies  did  flee,  and  were  discomfited  :  and  they  of  the 
household  divided  the  spoil.  Though  ye  have  Hen  among 
the  pots,  yet  shall  ye  be  as  the  wings  of  a  dove  :  that  is 
covered  with  silver  wings,  and  her  feathers  like  gold.  When 
the  Almighty  scattered  kings  for  their  sake  :  then  were  they  as 
white  as  snow  in  Salmon."  Now  while  the  individual  clauses 
in  these  three  verses  make  sense,  each  for  itself  as  far  as  it 
goes,  they  do  not  make  sense  taken  together,  and  quite 
manifestly  have  no  connexion  with  one  another  in  thought. 
In  point  of  fact,  they  are  the  headlines  of  hymns.  The  action 
of  the  psalm  is  dramatic.  It  is  a  processional,  and  the  first 
part,  the  first  ten  verses,  is  a  description  of  God's  victorious 
procession  out  of  Egypt  through  the  wilderness,  full  of  mira- 
culous mercies  toward  His  people,  ending  with  the  grant  to 
them  of  the  land  of  Canaan  as  their  inheritance.     Then  He 


THE    PRAYER   BOOK   PSALTER  225 

bids  the  company  of  women,  or,  as  the  Prayer  Book  version 
has  it,  "  preachers,"  to  celebrate  in  song  what  He  has  done. 
The  verses  following  are  the  first  lines  of  the  songs  which  they 
sing,  and  to  sing  them  as  the  consecutive  and  connected 
verses  of  a  psalm  is  precisely  as  it  would  be  to  make  such 
a  hymn  verse  as  this — 

"  My  God,  permit  me  not  to  be." 
'*  Nearer,  my  God,  to  Thee." 
"  Hail  the  day  that  sees  Him  rise." 
"  From  all  that  dwell  below  the  skies." 

I  think  it  must  be  clear  to  every  one  that  the  Anglican 
Reformers  were  unfortunately  mechanical  in  their  treatment  of 
the  Psalter.  If  they  had  not  been  bound  by  the  false  idea 
of  preserving  for  service  use,  as  well  as  in  the  Bible,  each 
psalm  in  its  integrity,  they  might  have  adopted  the  plan  of 
omitting  verses  not  intelhgible,  which  would  have  been  a 
natural  sequence  to  their  own  principle  that  the  services 
should  be  in  "a  tongue  understanded  of  the  people."  This 
certainly  would  have  been  in  accordance  with  ancient  and 
Catholic  use,  which  they  sought  to  substitute  in  other  matters 
for  the  mediaeval  use  of  Rome.  Indeed,  had  they  been  guided 
in  this  regard  by  primitive  use,  they  might  have  modified  the 
Venite,  the  Benedicite^  and  other  chants  by  the  omission  of 
local  and  distinctively  Jewish  references,  as  was  done  later  in 
the  American  Church,  thus  adapting  them  more  fully  to  use 
as  Christian  hymns.  Similarly,  they  might  have  modified  a 
few  of  the  psalms  of  the  Psalter  in  the  same  manner.  So,  for 
example,  the  Miserere  (Psalm  li.)  would  gain  by  the  omission 
of  the  last  two  verses,  just  as  the  Venite  of  the  American 
Prayer  Book  has  gained  by  the  omission  of  the  last  five  verses. 
Still  greater  would  be  the  gain  to  Psalm  cxxxvii.  by  the 
omission  of  the  last  three  verses,  which  would  indeed  restore 
that  psalm  to  its  original  and  most  ancient  form. 

But  in  the  case  of  the  last  three  verses  of  Psalm  cxxxvii. 

there  is  another  question  involved  in  their  omission  besides 

the  question  of  uninteUigibifity  or  merely  local  and  Jewish 

allusions.      These  verses,  like  verses  23-29  of  Psalm  Ixix., 

Q 


226   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

verses  1-19  of  Psalm  cix.,  and  a  few  other  verses  scattered 
here  and  there  through  other  psalms,  are  incompatible  in  their 
plain  sense  with  the  teaching  of  Christ.  There  is  a  certain 
traditional  interpretation  of  these  passages  proposed  by  some 
of  the  Church  fathers,  which  explains  away  the  imprecations 
in  a  mystical  manner.  But  even  granting  that  this  explanation 
is  correct  and  the  plain  sense  of  the  words  incorrect,  it  remains 
a  fact  that  as  the  words  themselves,  and  not  the  mystical  inter- 
pretation of  those  words,  are  chanted  or  recited  by  the  people, 
they  are  not  adapted  to  use  in  the  service.  It  is  a  poor  plan 
to  sing  hymns  which  are  unintelligible,  and  a  still  poorer 
plan  to  sing  hymns  which  must  inevitably  teach  false  doctrine 
to  the  ordinary  man.  Our  Lord  said,  "Ye  have  heard  that 
it  hath  been  said,  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbour,  and  hate 
thine  enemy.  But  I  say  unto  you,  Love  your  enemies,  bless 
them  that  curse  you,  do  good  to  them  that  hate  you,  and  pray 
for  them  which  despitefully  use  you,  and  persecute  you."  If 
we  read  this  to  the  people  once  in  three  months,  and  every 
week  or  two  call  upon  them  to  sing  or  recite,  without  any 
explanation,  such  passages  as  these :  "  Let  them  fall  from  one 
wickedness  to  another  :  and  not  come  into  Thy  righteousness. 

Let  them  be  wiped  out  of  the  book  of  the  living  :  and  not 
be  written  among  the  righteous  " ; 

"  Let  him  be  condemned  :  and  let  his  prayer  be  turned 
into  sin. 

Let  his  children  be  fatherless  :  and  his  wife  a  widow. 

Let  his  children  be  vagabonds,  and  beg  their  bread. 

Let  there  be  no  man  to  pity  him  :  nor  to  have  compassion 
upon  his  fatherless  children. 

Let  his  posterity  be  destroyed  :  and  in  the  next  generation 
let  his  name  be  clean  put  out. 

Let  the  wickedness  of  his  fathers  be  had  in  remembrance 
in  the  sight  of  the  Lord  :  and  let  not  the  sin  of  his  mother 
be  done  away. 

Let  it  thus  happen  from  the  Lord  unto  mine  enemies  " ; 

"  O  daughter  of  Babylon,  wasted  with  misery  :  yea,  happy 
shall  he  be  that  rewardeth  thee  as  thou  hast  served  us  " ; 


THE   PRAYER   BOOK   PSALTER  227 

"  Blessed  shall  he  be  that  taketh  thy  children  :  and  throweth 
them  against  the  stones" — we  shall  appear  to  the  average 
mind  to  give  the  preference  to  the  old  Jewish  doctrine,  as  the 
Jews  understood  and  to  their  misfortune  still  understand  it, 
following  the  plain  sense  of  the  words  of  such  psalms.  In 
arranging  psalms  for  use  in  the  Church  service  the  rule  should 
have  been  to  omit  all  passages  not  evidently  in  harmony  with 
the  morality  of  the  Gospels.  The  Psalms  in  their  entirety 
should  be  printed  in  the  Bible  and  used  as  Bible,  but  when 
they  are  to  be  used  as  hymns  of  the  Church  they  should  be 
used  in  a  proper  and  appropriate  form  and  manner.  The 
Anglican  Reformers  confounded  the  two  uses  in  their  arrange- 
ment of  the  Psalter. 

Having  discussed  the  Anglican  Psalter,  let  us  study  the 
development  out  of  that  of  the  American  use,  and  the  various 
changes  and  proposed  changes  in  the  use  of  the  Psalms  in 
that  Church.  The  first  practical  attempt  at  a  reform  of  the 
Anglican  Psalter  was  made  by  John  Wesley,  who  prepared  for 
his  followers,  in  1784,  a  version  of  "Select  Psalms,"  arranged, 
after  the  pattern  of  the  Anglican  Psalter,  for  a  month  of  thirty 
days.  He  did  not  emancipate  himself  from  the  mechanical 
arrangement  according  to  the  order  of  the  psalms  in  the 
Psalter,  neither  did  he  always  display  a  thorough  compre- 
hension of  the  sense  of  the  individual  psalms,  so  that,  for  ex- 
ample, he  assigns  the  third  Psalm,  which  is  a  morning  hymn, 
to  the  evening ;  but  his  "  Select  Psalms  "  are  an  improvement 
over  the  Anglican  arrangement,  in  that  a  selection  was  made 
of  those  psalms  best  adapted  for  the  purposes  of  worship  in 
the  Christian  Church,  the  selections  were  shortened,  the 
primitive  practice  of  adapting  the  Psalms  for  use  by  omissions, 
and  the  hke,  was  followed,  instead  of  the  stiff  Anglican 
method  of  singing  each  psalm  precisely  as  it  stands,  and 
particularly  all  passages  objectionable  from  the  standpoint  of 
Christian  morality  were  carefully  omitted. 

The  makers  of  the  American  Prayer  Book  seem  to  have  felt 
the  influence  of  Wesley's  "Select  Psalms."  The  Proposed  Book, 
which  appeared  a  couple  of  years  after  Wesley's  work,  treated 


228    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

the  Psalter  in  much  the  same  manner  as  he  had  done,  still 
clinging  to  the  division  into  sixty  parts,  two  for  each  of  the 
thirty  days  of  the  month,  and  arranging  the  Psalms  according 
to  the  order  in  which  they  happen  in  the  Psalter,  but  reducing 
the  size  of  the  daily  portions,  eliminating  passages  incompatible 
with  the  morality  of  Christ,  and  asserting  the  principle  of 
selection.  On  the  whole,  the  Psalter  of  the  Proposed  Book 
is  a  slight  improvement  on  the  "  Select  Psalms "  of  Wesley. 
Like  most  of  the  other  novelties  of  the  Proposed  Book,  this 
arrangement  of  the  Psalter  was  not  adopted  in  the  American 
Prayer  Book  of  1789  and  1792 ;  but  certain  important  changes 
were  made  in  the  line  of  the  reforms  proposed  by  the  compilers 
of  that  book.  The  Anglican  Psalter  was  retained  just  as  it 
stood,  so  that  whoever  wished  might  use  it ;  but  it  was  pre- 
faced by  ten  selections  of  psalms.  These  selections  were 
shorter  than  the  regular  Psalter  for  the  day,  and  were  selected 
with  a  view  to  furnishing  for  all  seasons  of  the  Church  Year 
appropriate  psalmody  in  harmony  with  the  other  parts  of  the 
service,  and  consistent  with  itself.  By  their  position  before 
the  Psalter,  arranged  according  to  the  days,  these  selections 
were  recommended  for  use  in  preference  to  the  Psalter  for 
the  day.  In  these  selections,  following  primitive  use,  the 
American  Church  fathers  did  not  hesitate  to  use  portions  of 
psalms  as  well  as  entire  psalms.  They  also  reverted  to  primi- 
tive use  in  recommending  the  use  of  the  Gloria  Patri  only 
after  each  selection  or  group  of  psalms,  allowing,  however,  as 
an  alternative  the  later  Western  practice  of  singing  the  Gloria 
after  each  individual  psalm.  The  former  use,  it  may  be  said 
once  more,  emphasises  the  idea  of  the  selection  of  psalms  as 
the  unit,  each  selection  being  treated  as  an  anthem,  while  the 
latter  use  treats  the  individual  psalm  as  the  unit,  and  insists, 
as  it  were,  on  its  integrity.  Further  than  this,  several  new 
canticles  were  prefixed  to  the  Psalter  for  optional  use  on  the 
great  feast  days,  composed  after  the  manner  of  various  primi- 
tive models  by  putting  together  verses  from  several  psalms. 
Following  the  same  primitive  freedom  of  treatment,  the  Venite 
was  vastly  improved  by  dropping  verses  8-1 1  of  Psalm  xcv. 


THE   PRAYER   BOOK   PSALTER  229 

and  substituting  therefor  a  few  verses  of  Psalm  xcvi.  Similarly 
the  Benedicite  was  improved  by  the  omission  of  the  last  verse, 
which  is  too  local  and  particularistic  for  use  in  a  general  hymn 
sung  in  Christian  churches  :  "  O  Ananias,  Azarias,  and  Misael, 
bless  ye  the  Lord;  praise  Him,  and  magnify  Him  for  ever." 
Two  new  canticles  were  also  added  to  Evening  Prayer,  com- 
posed out  of  psalms,  but  not  consisting  in  either  case  of  the 
entire  psalm :  the  Bonu7n  Est,  consisting  of  the  first  four 
verses  of  Psalm  xcii.,  and  the  Benedic  Anima  Mea^  consisting 
of  the  first  four  and  the  last  three  verses  of  Psalm  ciii.  (Un- 
fortunately, at  the  same  time,  the  two  Gospel  hymns,  Magnificat 
and  Nunc  Dimittis,  were  omitted  from  Evening  Prayer.)  A 
change  was  also  made  in  the  psalmody  for  the  burial  service 
on  the  same  primitive  model.  The  English  Prayer  Book 
provided  two  psalms,  xxxix.  and  xc,  each  of  which,  after  the 
Anglican  manner,  was  to  be  used  entire,  and  each  to  be 
followed  by  the  Gloria.  The  American  revisers  omitted 
several  somewhat  irrelevant  or  inappropriate  verses  from  each 
psalm,  making  of  the  two  one  anthem,  and  emphasised  the 
unity  of  this,  as  over  against  the  Anglican  idea  of  separate 
psalms,  by  placing  one  Gloria  at  the  end  of  the  whole. 

I  have  already  consumed  so  much  space  that  I  shall  not 
dare  to  enter  here  into  the  history  of  the  use  of  the  Psalms  of 
David  in  metre,  as  appointed  to  be  used  from  time  to  time  in 
the  American  Church.  At  first  a  translation  of  the  whole 
Book  of  Psalms  into  metre,  Tate  and  Brady's,  was  bound 
up  with  the  Prayer  Book  and  "allowed  to  be  sung  in  all 
congregations  of  the  said  Church  before  and  after  Morning 
and  Evening  Prayer,  and  also  before  and  after  sermons,  at 
the  discretion  of  the  Minister";  and  it  was  "the  duty  of 
every  Minister  of  any  Church,  either  by  standing  directions, 
or  from  time  to  time,  to  appoint  the  portions  of  Psalms  which 
are  to  be  sung."  In  1808  a  rubric  was  adopted  providing  that 
one  of  the  metrical  psalms  should  be  sung  at  each  service. 
In  1832  a  selection  of  psalms  was  substituted  for  the  full 
translation  of  the  Psalter,  and  this  selection  of  psalms  in 
metre  remained  in  the  Prayer  Book  until  1871.     This  use  of 


230   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

metrical  psalms  in  addition  to  the  psalms  of  the  Psalter 
receives  elucidation,  if  any  were  wanted,  from  the  authority 
given  in  1785  to  the  committee  appointed  to  publish  the 
Proposed  Book.  They  were  "  authorised  to  pubhsh  with  the 
Book  of  Common  Prayer  such  of  the  reading  and  singing 
Psalms"  as  they  should  think  proper.  The  Psalter  did  not 
appear  to  our  fathers  to  be  real  poetry,  adapted  to  the  purpose 
of  singing,  and  so  they  felt  it  necessary  to  have  it  translated 
into  poetry  for  musical  use.  They  meant  to  read  it  responsively 
for  edification,  because  it  was  the  inspired  Word  of  God,  but 
for  musical  purposes  they  thought  it  desirable  to  have  it  trans- 
lated into  poetry.  They  did  not  appreciate  the  Psalter,  which 
was  precisely  the  trouble  with  the  English  Reformers,  and  they 
did  not  know  that  it  was  poetry.  I  am  reminded  of  the  horror 
with  which  an  American  poet,  Mrs.  Helen  Hunt  Jackson,  once 
narrated  to  me  a  proposition  which  her  publishers  had  made 
tc  her  to  translate  the  Book  of  Ruth  into  poetry.  They  were 
about  to  issue  an  illustrated  edition  of  Ruth,  and  for  that 
purpose  wished  her  to  translate  it  into  poetry.  "  As  though 
my  poor  doggerel  could  begin  to  compare  with  the  magnificent 
poetry  of  that  book,"  said  she.  The  trouble  with  her  pub- 
lishers was  that  they  did  not  know  that  it  was  poetry.  The 
English  Reformers  were  in  much  the  same  condition  regarding 
the  Psalter,  and  the  American  fathers  also  were  somewhat 
slow  to  find  out  that  psalms  are  hymns  even  if  they  do 
not  rhyme,  and  if  there  are  not  the  same  number  of  syllables 
in  each  line. 

In  1826  a  wise  and  progressive  move  was  made  in  General 
.Convention,  which,  had  it  been  successful,  would  have  done 
much  for  the  Psalter  in  bringing  us  back  to  a  more  primitive 
use.  On  motion  of  Bishop  Hobart,  of  New  York,  the 
House  of  Bishops  proposed  certain  resolutions  for  a  per- 
missive shortening  of  the  service,  which  were  adopted  by  the 
House  of  Clerical  and  Lay  Deputies.  The  first  of  these 
resolutions  dealt  with  the  Psalter,  and  gave  the  following 
discretion  in  regard  to  its  use :  "  The  Minister,  instead  of 
reading  from  the  Psalter,  as  divided  for  daily  morning  and 


THE   PRAYER   BOOK   PSALTER  231 

evening  prayers,  may  read  one  of  the  selections  set  out  by 
this  Church,  or  any  other  Psalm  or  Psalms,  except  on  those 
days  on  which  Proper  Psalms  are  appointed."  Bishop  Moore, 
of  Virginia,  opposed  this  and  all  the  proposed  changes,  on 
the  ground  that  one  innovation  would  be  followed  by  another, 
and  finally  all  uniformity  of  worship  be  destroyed.  This  view 
ultimately  prevailed,  and  the  next  General  Convention  dis- 
missed the  further  consideration  of  the  resolutions  passed  by 
its  predecessor  as  inexpedient. 

But  the  need  for  some  changes  in  the  Prayer  Book  was 
a  real  one,  and  changes  could  not  be  staved  off  for  ever 
by  an  overtimid  conservatism.  To  be  sure,  these  changes, 
when  they  finally  came,  were  not  radical,  and  were  extremely 
small  in  proportion  to  the  amount  of  fuss  made  over  them ; 
nevertheless  they  went  in  general  much  further  than  the 
changes  so  earnestly  deprecated  by  Bishop  Moore.  In  the 
matter  of  the  Psalter,  and  chants  taken  from  the  Psalter, 
however,  the  changes  in  the  new  American  Prayer  Book  of 
1892  are  less  radical  than  those  proposed  by  Bishop  Hobart, 
and,  indeed,  in  some  respects  the  changes  are  rather  reactionary 
than  progressive.  This  is  shown  in  the  directions  for  the  use 
of  the  Gloria.  It  has  been  pointed  out  that  in  the  first 
American  Prayer  Book  not  only  was  permission  given  to  use 
the  Gloria  after  each  selection  or  group  of  psalms  only, 
according  to  the  early  Eastern  use,  but  that  this  was  given 
the  preference  over  the  later  Latin  use,  adhered  to  in  the 
Anglican  Psalter,  of  singing  the  Gloria  after  each  individual 
psalm.  In  the  new  American  Prayer  Book  this  is  reversed, 
and  while  permission  is  still  given  to  use  the  Gloria  after  the 
primitive  method,  preference  is  given  by  the  rubric  to  the 
Latin  use  of  singing  it  after  each  several  psalm.  The  prin- 
ciple at  stake  is  well  illustrated  in  the  treatment  of  the  Burial 
Chant  in  the  same  Prayer  Book.  In  the  old  American  Prayer 
Book  it  was  treated  as  a  unit,  as  one  anthem,  although  com- 
posed out  of  portions  of  two  psalms,  and  accordingly  the 
Gloria  was  sung  only  at  the  close  of  the  whole  anthem.  In 
the  new  Prayer  Book  it  is  separated  into  two  parts,  according 


232   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

to  the  psalms  from  which  it  is  composed,  and  the  Gloria  is 
ordered  to  be  sung  after  each  part,  to  the  serious  detriment 
of  its  unity  as  an  anthem,  but  with  the  result  of  emphasising 
the  fact  that  it  is  not  a  single  psalm  in  the  Bible.  The 
omission  of  the  alternative  anthems  for  special  days,  com- 
posed out  of  several  psalms,  points  perhaps  in  the  same 
direction. 

In  the  matter  of  the  use  of  the  Psalter  as  a  whole,  the 
preference  given  in  the  old  book  to  the  selections  of  psalms 
over  the  Psalter  for  the  day  is  reversed,  and  the  selections 
themselves  are  no  longer  printed  separately,  a  most  efficient 
and  practical  way  of  discouraging  their  use  and  bringing  them 
into  desuetude,  without  actually  prohibiting  them  altogether. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  number  of  selections  was  increased 
from  ten  to  twenty,  and  the  additional  ten  selections  are  on 
the  whole  admirable.  But  the  failure  to  print  the  selections 
separately,  and  the  substitution  for  the  separate  selections  of 
a  calendar  by  which  anyone  wishing  to  use  selections  may 
hunt  up  the  proper  psalms  for  himself,  much  more  than 
counterbalances  the  increase  in  the  number  of  the  selections 
from  ten  to  twenty.  If  the  twenty  selections  were  printed 
separately  before  the  daily  Psalter,  as  the  old  selections  were, 
the  gain  for  the  use  of  the  Psalter  would  be  very  considerable. 
As  it  is,  the  practical  inconvenience  of  using  them  is  such 
that  it  would  have  been  much  better  to  have  left  the  old 
ten  selections  untouched,  and  the  result  of  the  increase  in 
the  number  of  the  selections  is  apt  to  be  the  disuse  of 
selections  altogether  and  the  complete  reversion  to  the 
haphazard  Anglican  method  of  using  the  Psalter.  The 
increase  of  the  number  of  days  for  which  special  psalms 
are  appointed  from  six  to  sixteen  is  a  decided  advance  over 
the  old  book. 

As  the  new  American  book  stands,  then,  there  is  in  some 
particulars  an  advance  over  the  old  book  in  the  use  of  the 
Psalms,  and  in  other  cases  the  old  book  was  superior  to 
the  new;  practically,  however,  the  new  book  is  inferior  to 
the  old,  owing  to  the  omission  of   the  separate   selections. 


THE   PRAYER   BOOK   PSALTER  233 

This  was  the  great  practical  blunder  of  the  revisers  of  the 
American  Prayer  Book,  and  this  omission  more  than  neutral- 
ised all  the  good  that  they  did  in  the  way  of  increasing  the 
number  of  the  selections  provided  for  use.  Far  better  have 
ten  selections,  and  print  them  before  the  Psalter,  than 
have  twenty  selections,  indicated  only  by  their  numbers,  so 
that  it  is  inconvenient  to  use  them,  and  so  that  it  shall  appear 
that  the  recommendation  of  the  Church  is  to  use  the  Psalter 
of  the  day.  Further  revision  of  the  American  book  is  still 
needed  in  the  matter  of  the  use  of  the  Psalter.  The  first 
and  practically  the  most  important  thing  to  do  is  to  have  the 
twenty  selections  printed  out  in  full  before  the  Psalter  as 
arranged  for  daily  use. 

The  second  step  should  be,  though  they  might  well  both  be 
taken  together,  to  pass  Bishop  Hobart's  rubric,  mentioned 
above,  which  succeeded  in  passing  the  General  Convention 
of  1826,  only  to  be  defeated  in  1829,  permitting  the  minister, 
where  he  thinks  it  desirable,  to  read  instead  of  the  Psalter 
for  the  day  or  one  of  the  appointed  selections,  "any  other 
Psalm  or  Psalms,  except  on  those  days  on  which  proper 
Psalms  are  appointed." 

Our  object  should  be  to  make  the  Psalter  a  true  hymnal. 
If  it  is  desirable  to  have  it  read  in  course,  that  all  of  it  may 
surely  be  brought  to  the  ears  of  the  faithful  and  regular 
attendants  at  our  Church  services  some  time  or  other,  let 
it  be  added  to  the  calendar  of  Scriptures  to  be  read  in  church. 
We  already  read  in  that  calendar  several  songs  and  poems 
which,  among  the  Jews  and  in  the  early  Church,  and  even 
in  the  mediaeval  Church,  were  treated  as  psalmody  and  sung 
with  or  in  the  place  of  psalms.  There  is  no  reason  why 
psalms  should  not  be  read  from  the  lectern  as  well  as  such 
poems  as  Deuteronomy  xxxiii.  But  when  we  use  the  Psalms 
as  psalmody  in  the  Church  they  should  be  treated  as  hymns. 
They  are  in  reality  the  grandest  collection  of  hymns  ever 
brought  together,  the  inspired  hymn-book  of  the  Jewish 
Church,  and  deserve  an  intelligent  use,  which  shall  bring 
out  more  fully  to  the  ordinary  man  their  marvellous  beauty 


234   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

and  comprehensiveness.  The  mechanical  prayer-wheel  system, 
by  which  semi-daily  mathematically  measured  sections  are 
turned  off  without  the  slightest  regard  to  sense,  is  a  fatal 
obstacle  to  their  intelligent  comprehension.  They  should  be 
treated  with  some  of  that  freedom  and  realisation  of  their 
living  sense  which  characterise  the  Jewish  and  the  early 
Christian  use. 


Part    IV 
ARCHEOLOGY   AND   THE    BIBLE 


CHAPTER   X 
A    REVIEW   OF   RESULTS 

IN  a  former  chapter  I  have  spoken  of  archaeological  dis- 
coveries as  one  of  the  great  factors  in  the  development 
of  Biblical  Criticism  within  the  last  half-century.  In  this  and 
the  succeeding  chapters  I  propose  to  treat  (i)  the  general 
results  of  archaeological  research,  and  (2)  som.e  special  applica- 
tions of  archaeology  to  the  solution  of  Bible  problems. 

There  is  an  incHnation  on  the  part  of  some  to  set  archae- 
ology over  against  Higher  Criticism,  as  though  it  were  a 
separate  discipline,  and  not  only  separate  from,  but  also 
opposed  to  the  Higher  Criticism.  In  reality  Higher  Criticism 
includes  in  itself  the  use  of  archaeology.  Given  a  text  de- 
termined by  the  Lower  Criticism,  it  is  the  business  of  Higher 
Criticism  to  interpret  that  text  upon  its  literary  side;  to 
determine,  that  is,  questions  of  date,  authorship,  method  of 
composition,  and  the  like.  To  determine  these  questions 
it  draws  upon  all  accessible  material,  and  consequently  upon 
archaeological  material. 

But  it  is  true  that  there  has  been  a  tendency  on  the  part  of 
Old  Testament  students  to  develop,  not  Higher  Criticism,  but 
close  criticism  of  the  Old  Testament  to  an  extreme  degree, 
depending  unduly  on  subjective  data,  that  is,  on  the  mi- 
pression  made  upon  the  mind  of  the  critic  by  the  style, 
the  thought,  the  doctrine,  and  the  like.  While  the  study 
of  style  and  the  study  of  the  development  of  thought  are 
necessary  parts  of  the  historical  and  literary  criticism  of  any 
work,  and  while  there  is  a  science  of  the  study  of  these,  so 
that  it  is  quite  possible  to  say  that  such  and  such  a  thing 

237 


238    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

could  not  have  been  written  in  such  and  such  a  period, 
because  its  style  and  language  belong  clearly  to  such  and 
such  another  period,  or  because  its  conceptions  in  regard 
to  certain  matters  are  such  as  do  not  appear  before  or  after 
such  and  such  a  period,  nevertheless,  it  is  also  true  that  there 
is  a  large  subjective  element  in  this  discipline,  and  it  is 
necessary  to  check  the  results  obtained  through  it  by  data 
of  a  more  objective  character. 

Comparing  the  present  position  of  Old  Testament  criticism 
with  the  criticism  of  the  Roman,  Greek,  Indian,  and  Persian 
literary  remains,  we  find  that  there  has  been  a  reaction  in 
those  fields  against  the  use  of  such  subjective  evidence  alone 
and  an  inclination  to  return,  in  regard  to  questions  of  date 
and  of  authorship,  to  a  more  conservative  position,  as  a  result 
largely  of  archaeological  discoveries.  It  is  not  so  long  since 
the  divisive  theory  of  the  Homeric  poems  was  quite  generally 
accepted  by  critical  scholars,  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  being 
divided  into  a  great  number  of  smaller  poems,  which  were 
supposed  to  have  been  worked  together  at  a  later  time. 
Almost  as  a  corollary  of  this  belief  in  the  composite  and 
late  authorship  of  these  poems,  their  testimony  both  as  to 
historical  incidents  and  also  in  regard  to  the  conditions  of 
life  and  the  civilisation  of  the  period  which  they  professed 
to  represent  was  rejected  as  incorrect.  There  was  even  an 
inclination  to  resolve  the  Homeric  poems  as  a  whole  into 
sun  myths.  Discoveries  at  Hissarlik,  Mycenae,  Tiryns,  the 
Argive  Herasum,  Cnossos,  and  elsewhere  have  shown  us 
that  the  historical  conditions  of  the  Greek  world  at  the  time 
supposed  to  be  represented  by  the  poems  of  Homer  corre- 
sponded in  general  to  the  representations  of  the  Homeric 
poems.  We  have  ascertained  that  some  at  least  of  the  de- 
scriptions of  ancient  cities  in  the  Homeric  poems  are  his- 
torically correct  and  rest  upon  contemporary  information  or 
personal  knowledge,  and  that  certain  incidents,  such  as  the 
destruction  of  Troy,  are  historical.  The  argument  against 
the  early  composition  and  continued  transmission  of  the 
poems  on  the  ground  that  the  art  of  writing  was  not  known 


ARCH^OLOGICAL   RESULTS  239 

at  so  early  a  period,  and  even  at  a  much  later  time  was 
available  only  for  comparatively  brief  monumental  inscriptions, 
effective  thirty  years  ago,  has  been  discredited  first  by  the 
discovery  of  elaborate  systems  of  writing  and  the  preservation 
of  long  literary  works  in  regions  in  communication  with  the 
Greek  world  before  Homer's  time,  and  finally  by  the  discovery 
within  the  bounds  of  the  Greek  world  itself  of  at  least  two 
systems  of  writing  antedating  Homer,  and  of  the  use  as 
writing  material  of  clay  tablets  of  the  same  character  as  those 
on  which  the  Babylonian  and  Assyrian  books  and  records 
were  written. 

The  result  of  these  archaeological  discoveries,  showing  us 
the  historical  trustworthiness  of  certain  facts  and  descriptions 
made  use  of  in  the  poems,  has  been  to  alter  the  opinions  of 
critics  regarding  the  composition  and  the  date  of  the  Homeric 
poems.  In  consequence  the  antiquity  and  unity  of  those 
poems  are  now  generally  acknowledged.  It  is  also  recognised 
that  the  poems  are  of  great  importance  from  the  historical 
standpoint,  that  they  represent  fairly  the  general  civilisation  of 
the  Greek  world,  and  the  customs  and  ideas  of  that  world  at  a 
period  not  far  removed  from  the  time  of  the  events  narrated, 
and  that  some  certainly  of  the  events  narrated  are  based  on 
historical  facts.  On  the  other  hand,  no  one  supposes  that 
the  Homeric  poems  are  sober  history.  Myths  and  legends 
are  woven  in,  gods  play  a  part  which  is  manifestly  unhistorical, 
there  is  a  childlike  representation  of  the  relations  of  gods  to 
men  and  of  men  to  one  another. 

Traditional  Roman  history  has  passed  through  a  somewhat 
similar  course.  Not  long  since  it  was  held  that  Roman  history 
began  a  little  later  than  the  end  of  the  period  of  the  kings. 
Before  that  there  were  only  myths,  fables,  and  traditions,  out  of 
which  it  was  impossible  to  obtain  anything  of  the  character  of 
rehable  history.  Partly  through  study  of  the  monuments, 
partly  through  a  more  careful  investigation  of  material  by 
Mommsen  and  his  school,  we  now  have  Roman  history 
reconstructed  almost  from  the  time  of  Romulus  and  Remus. 
We  have  not  returned  to  the  position  of  that  earlier  age  which 


240   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

accepted  literally  the  old  stories  of  Romulus  and  Remus 
suckled  by  the  wolf,  but  we  recognise  the  historical  facts 
underlying  these  stories,  and  with  proper  caution  utilise  them 
for  purposes  of  history. 

The  history  of  the  study  of  the  ancient  Indian  and  Persian 
sacred  literature  and  historical  traditions  has  run  a  similar 
course.  One  of  our  leading  Persian  scholars  writes,  "  To- 
day the  best  scholars  have  outHved  the  age  of  radicalism, 
with  its  tendencies  to  push  dates  down  to  a  comparatively 
late  period,  to  deny  reputed  authorship,  or  everywhere 
to  find  composite  authorship,  and  to  reconstruct  texts 
with  minute  subdivision.  At  least  a  more  conservative 
tendency  has  set  in,  and  Indian  and  Persian  traditions  receive 
more  respect  than  they  have  for  many  a  day.  The  support 
which  the  traditions  of  Buddhism,  for  instance,  have  received 
from  recent  archaeological  finds  forms  a  striking  illustration. 
With  reference  to  dates,  as  a  second  point,  there  is  a  present 
inclination  to  push  the  Veda  back  a  millennium  or  two  earlier, 
rather  than  to  make  its  time  later.  Although  this  cannot  be 
said  altogether  with  regard  to  the  date  of  the  Avesta,  a  state- 
ment to  the  like  effect  may  be  made  with  regard  to  its  text, 
with  which  such  liberties  formerly  were  taken."  The  inclina- 
tion in  general  among  Indian  and  Persian  scholars  to-day 
is  to  push  back  the  dates  of  the  sacred  books,  to  accept  the 
traditional  views  in  a  modified  form,  and  to  maintain  unity 
of  authorship. 

Somewhat  similar  has  been  the  movement  in  the  field  of 
New  Testament  criticism.  The  result  of  investigation  has 
been  to  establish  the  general  accuracy  and  reliability,  as  well 
"as  the  early  date  of  the  Gospels,  the  Acts,  and  many,  if  not  all, 
of  the  Epistles  attributed  to  St.  Paul,  as  over  against  the  views 
presented  in  the  first  half  of  last  century.  I  do  not  mean 
that  the  old  so-called  orthodox  views  with  regard  to  these 
books  are  now  accepted ;  but  the  point  to  which  critical  study 
has  returned  is  at  least  very  far  removed  from  the  extreme 
radical  positions  of  Baur  and  the  Tubingen  school. 

But  while  in  Homeric  study,  in  the  field  of  Roman  history, 


ARCH^OLOGICAL   RESULTS  241 

of  the  Veda,  the  Avesta,  Buddhistic  literature,  and  the  Books 
of  the  New  Testament  the  tendency  has  been  toward  a 
rehabihtation  in  a  modified  form  of  the  older  views  regarding 
date,  unity  of  composition,  and  general  historical  credibility'' 
the  tendency  among  Old  Testament  critics  has  seemed  to  be 
more  and  more  in  the  opposite  direction.  The  Hexateuch 
is  divided  by  each  new  critic  more  minutely  than  by  his 
predecessors,  and  the  inclination  is  to  refer  its  composition,  or 
at  least  its  final  composition,  to  an  always  later  date.  There 
is  the  sam.e  tendency  in  the  treatment  of  the  prophetical  and 
other  literature  of  the  Old  Testament.  The  latest  works  on 
the  Book  of  Isaiah,  for  instance,  divide  that  book,  partly  on 
the  ground  of  style,  partly  on  the  ground  of  thought,  into 
a  very  large  number  of  sections,  some  of  which  are  ascribed 
to  Isaiah,  some  to  later  unknown  prophets,  and  some  to 
redactors  who  have  worked  over  earlier  material  of  Isaiah 
himself. 

Hand  in  hand  with  this  tendency  to  divide  and  subdivide 
goes  the  inclination  to  assign  both  the  completed  products 
and  also  the  constituent  parts  out  of  which  those  products 
were  composed  to  ever  later  dates.     The  redaction  of  the 
Hexateuch  was  not  completed  before  the  third  century  b.c, 
if  then.     Portions  of  the  Book  of  Isaiah  are  referred  to  a  time 
as  late  as  the  Maccabees,  the  whole  of  the  Wisdom  literature 
is  carried  down  into  the  post-Exilic  period,  and  the  entire 
Book  of  Psalms  is  relegated  to  the  same  epoch,  some  of  the 
psalms  being  dated  as  late  as  Herod.     This  treatment  of  the 
Old  Testament  books  in  regard  to  date,  authorship,  and  com- 
position,   has,  of  course,  affected   the  whole   conception   of 
Hebrew  history.     Everything  before  the  time  of  Jeremiah,  or 
even  before  the  Persian  period,  following  the  Exile,  would 
seem  to  be  involved  in  uncertainty,  because  all  writings  of  an 
earlier  date  have  been  so  much  worked  over  that  it  is  question- 
able what  dependence  can  be  placed  upon  them  as  representing 
the  actual  thought  of  earlier  times.     Against  this  inclination 
of  Old  Testament  critics  a  protest  is  now  being  raised.     It  is 
claimed  that  archaeological  evidence  has  not  been  sufficiently 

R 


242    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

utilised  by  them,  and  that  the  evidence  of  archaeology  tends 
to  substantiate,  in  a  general  way,  the  credibility  of  the  historical 
traditions  of  Israel,  and  by  doing  so  indirectly  to  lend  strength 
to  the  older  traditional  views  of  the  date  and  authorship  of 
books. 

It  is  pointed  out  that  the  result  of  archaeological  discovery 
in  every  other  field  has  been  to  carry  dates  backward ;  that  the 
antiquity  of  civilisation  and  of  the  use  of  writing  has  been 
pushed  back  some  thousands  of  years ;  that  many  of  the 
peoples  about  Palestine,  or  with  whom  the  Hebrews  are 
supposed  to  have  been  in  contact,  possessed  a  highly  de- 
veloped civilisation,  and  at  least  in  some  cases  a  literature  at 
a  period  even  earlier  than  that  to  which  tradition  would  ascribe 
the  Hebrew  historical  narratives,  laws,  poems,  and  the  like. 
From  this  they  argue  that  the  early  Hebrews  must  have 
possessed  a  similar  civilisation,  have  been  acquainted  with 
writings,  and  have  composed  and  handed  down  historical 
records,  laws,  poems,  and  the  like. 

Let  us  examine  briefly  what  has  been  proved  in  the  Old 
Testament  field  by  archaeological  discoveries,  and  the  problems 
which  still  face  us,  partly  as  a  result  of  those  discoveries  them- 
selves. Sixty  years  ago,  when  Ewald's  History  of  Israel  was 
written,  we  were  in  the  period  of  scepticism  with  regard  to 
everything  ancient.  Babylonia  had  not  yet  begun  to  yield 
""^  its  ancient  remains  to  the  explorer,  and  what  little  had  been 
found  and  examined  in  Egypt  was  not  yet  understood.  The 
remains  of  ancient  secular  histories  which  had  come  down  to 
us,  such  as  the  fragments  of  Berosus  and  Sanchoniathon,  were 
■  not  regarded  as  possessing  any  authority.  The  legendary 
stories  of  the  early  days  of  Rome  had  been  discredited,  as 
had  been  also  the  traditions  of  Greek  antiquity.  Our  real 
knowledge  of  secular  antiquity  was  supposed  to  commence 
about  B.C.  500,  Everything  before  that  time  was  shadowy, 
and  the  wisest  attitude  for  the  scientific  historian,  with  regard 
to  conditions  before  that  date,  was  one  of  agnosticism.  Real 
history  began  about  B.C.  500,  and  even  then  the  field  of  that 
history  was  extremely  limited.     It  included  Greece  and  Rome, 


ARCHif^OLOGICAL   RESULTS  243 

and  in  a  vague  and  imperfect  way  Egypt  and  parts  of  hither 
Asia  as  far  as  Persia.  From  the  further  East,  from  India  and 
from  China,  literary  remains  claiming  a  great  antiquity  had 
been  brought  to  Europe  and  deciphered  and  interpreted  by 
European  scholars;  but  while  these  remains  claimed  a  great 
antiquity,  they  did  not  furnish  the  material  for  a  definite  and 
certain  chronology,  and  whatever  the  opinions  of  individual 
scholars,  there  was  no  general  agreement  which  rendered  it 
possible  to  use  this  material  for  the  earlier  history  of  the 
human  race.  Geologists  had  reached  the  conclusion  that  the 
world  was  almost  incredibly  old,  but  the  question  of  the  date 
of  the  appearance  of  man  upon  the  earth  was  still  unsettled. 
Some  held  to  a  very  early,  and  some  to  a  later  date ;  but  for 
all  practical  purposes  there  was  an  agreement  that  civilisation 
could  not  be  said  to  have  begun  much  earlier  than  the  millen- 
nium before  Christ.  Writing  was  supposed  to  have  been 
invented,  or  at  least  to  have  become  practically  useful,  not 
earlier  than  about  B.C.  600,  but  no  definite  and  detailed  know- 
ledge of  man  in  a  state  of  higher  civilisation  was  available,  as 
already  stated,  before  about  b.c.  500.  That  being  the  point  of 
view  of  the  scientific  historians  with  regard  to  ancient  literature 
and  ancient  civilisation,  it  was  inevitable  that  the  Old  Testa- 
ment record  and  the  Old  Testament  literature  should  be  viewed 
with  suspicion.  The  Old  Testament  claimed  to  present  the 
history  of  a  high  civilisation,  advanced  religious  development, 
and  literary  activities,  commencing  somewhere  in  the  latter 
half  of  the  second  millennium  b.c.  Critical  students  were 
naturally  inclined  to  discredit  this  testimony  as  exceptional, 
and  apparently  in  contradiction  to  everything  else  that  was 
known.  How,  for  instance,  was  it  possible  that  these  things 
should  have  been  written  down  and  preserved,  as  was  claimed, 
in  view  of  the  fact  that  writing  did  not  seem  to  have  been 
available  for  practical  purposes  earlier  than  about  b.c.  600  ? 

Without  going  into  the  details  of  the  wonderful  story  of 
archaeological  discoveries  and  the  decipherment  of  ancient 
inscriptions  during  the  last  sixty  years,  I  may  say  that  at  the 
present  day  we  have,  from  one  source  and  another,  a  pretty 


244   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

fair  picture  of  an  advanced  stage  of  civilisation  prevailing 
through  parts  at  least  of  Asia  Minor,  Armenia,  and  Meso- 
potamia, in  the  valleys  of  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates  from  the 
sources  to  the  mouths  of  those  rivers,  in  Persia  and  adjacent 
regions,  in  Southern  Arabia,  in  Egypt,  and  apparently  also  in 
Syria,  including  Palestine  and  the  neighbouring  islands,  in  the 
latter  half  of  the  third  millennium  B.C.  At  or  about  this  time 
also  civilisation  spread  to  China,  and  shortly  after  this  India 
was  occupied  by  a  civilised  race.  At  the  close  of  the  third 
millennium  B.C.  the  civilised  portion  of  the  Eastern  hemisphere 
comprised,  as  far  as  we  now  know,  hither  Asia,  with  the 
adjacent  islands  and  coast  lands  of  Europe,  Egypt,  Nubia  in 
Africa,  China,  and  a  part  of  India.  There  are  two  parts  of 
this  larger  territory  in  which  recent  researches  have  shown  a 
civilisation  still  much  more  ancient,  namely,  Egypt  and  the 
lower  part  of  the  valleys  of  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates, 
commonly  called  Babylonia.  In  both  of  these  inscribed 
records  carry  history  back,  as  is  ordinarily  claimed,  to  a 
period  about  B.C.  4,000  to  5,000 ;  while  from  Babylonia  we 
have  evidence  of  civilised  peoples  dwelling  in  cities  and 
organised  states,  making  pottery  and  building  temples  .and 
houses  still  a  thousand  years  earlier. 

An  immense  mass  of  inscribed  material  has  been  secured 
from  Egypt,  Babylonia,  Assyria,  and  Persia.  The  earliest 
monuments  from  Babylonia  and  Egypt,  to  which  reference 
has  already  been  made,  going  back  to  B.C.  4,000  or  5,000, 
give  us  the  names  of  kings  and  cities  and  temples,  notices 
of  expeditions  and  conquests,  showing  us  that  at  that  early 
time  the  extent  of  the  civilised  world  with  which  those 
countries  were  in  contact  was  not  inconsiderable.  Detailed 
records  of  the  life  of  the  people  begin  somewhere  in  the  third 
millennium  B.C.  From  that  time  on  we  are  able  to  draw  an 
accurate  picture  of  the  life  which  the  people  lived.  Writing 
was  common  and  freely  practised.  For  purposes  of  political 
history  these  inscriptions  are  not  so  directly  valuable  as  those 
of  a  somewhat  later  date  from  Assyria.  Assyrian  history 
commences  in  the  second  millennium  e.g.,  but  official  records 


ARCH^OLOGICAL   RESULTS  245 

systematically  dated,  recording  the  succession  of  events, 
expeditions,  eclipses,  etc.,  do  not  occur  until  the  first  part 
of  the  following  millennium,  when  Assyria  became  the  great 
conquering  world-power.  From  the  middle  of  the  ninth 
century  B.C.,  when  Israel  first  came  in  contact  with  Assyria, 
onward  to  the  latter  part  of  the  seventh  century,  when  Nineveh 
was  destroyed  and  the  Assyrian  power  annihilated,  we  have 
a  series  of  records,  in  which  Israel  and  Judah  are  mentioned 
from  time  to  time,  constituting  a  general  political  history  of 
hither  Asia.  By  means  of  these  records  we  have  been  able 
to  reconstruct  Hebrew  chronology  for  that  period,  and  to 
check  and  confirm  the  Hebrew  historical  records.  These 
Assyrian  records  have  been  especially  valuable  in  giving  us 
a  broader  survey  than  we  find  in  the  Bible,  making  known 
the  names  of  kings  and  nations,  showing  us  their  relations  to 
one  another,  their  hostilities  and  alliances,  their  relative 
strength,  etc.  This  has  thrown  much  light  on  the  political 
conditions  of  Israel's  world  and  the  political  career  of  the 
people  of  Israel  from  David's  time  onward,  and  has  enabled 
us  to  understand  the  causes  of  some  of  the  events  recorded 
in  the  Bible,  and  the  meaning  of  not  a  few  references  formerly 
misunderstood,  or  not  understood  at  all.  The  general  pro- 
gress of  events  has  been  elucidated,  and  the  part  which  Israel 
played  in  the  greater  scheme  of  history  made  apparent.  Late 
Babylonian  and  Persian  records  are  not  so  systematic  in  their 
historical  survey,  and  do  not  contain  the  same  direct  notices 
of  Israel  and  Judah.  They  do,  however,  give  us  a  general 
view  of  the  political  history  of  Israel's  world  during  the  period 
following  the  fall  of  Nineveh.  In  general  the  historical 
records  so  far  discovered  confirm  the  statements  and  the 
historical  representations  of  Samuel,  Kings,  and  the  Prophets. 
Hebrew  history  as  recorded  in  those  books  is  proved  by  the 
comparison  to  be  honest  and  trustworthy,  but  not  infallible, 
as,  for  instance,  in  the  matter  of  chronology,  nor  altogether 
without  bias,  and  a  natural  inclination  toward  a  patriotic 
colouring  of  the  story.  Chronicles,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
shown  to  be  of  little  or  no  value  for  purposes  of  political 


246   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

history,  while  Esther,  Daniel,  and  Jonah,  once  supposed  to 
be  historical,  are  made  to  appear  fictitious. 

With  regard  to  the  period  preceding  David,  the  conditions 
are  different.  Up  to  the  middle  of  the  second  millennium 
B.C.  our  knowledge  of  Syria  and  Palestine  is  indirect  and 
very  fragmentary  and  meagre,  derived  from  allusions  to 
campaigns  in  Babylonian  and  Egyptian  inscriptions.  To  the 
beginning  of  the  second  half  of  that  millennium  belong  the 
Tel  el-Amarna  tablets,  found  in  Egypt,  containing  letters  from 
numerous  kings  and  governors  throughout  Palestine,  Syria, 
and  Mesopotamia,  addressed  to  their  Egyptian  suzerain  or 
ally.  These  letters  show  us  the  condition  of  Palestine  shortly 
before  the  Israelite  invasion  and  conquest.  These  conditions 
accord  with  what  we  are  told  in  Numbers,  Joshua,  and  Judges 
of  the  period  of  the  conquest,  and  indeed  make  clear  to  us 
why  that  conquest  was  possible.  They  show  us  also  peoples 
kindred  to  the  Hebrews  pressing  into  the  country  from  the 
east  and  north,  and  incidentally  throw  light  on  the  meaning 
of  the  race  stories  contained  in  the  legends  of  the  patriarchs 
in  Genesis.  They  show  too  that  the  language  of  Jerusalem 
and  of  Canaan  in  general  was  Hebrew,  and  confirm  the 
tradition  of  the  Israelites,  contained  in  the  Old  Testament, 
but  formerly  misunderstood,  that  their  ancestors  were 
Aramaeans  or  Syrians,  speaking  originally  an  Aramaic  tongue, 
and  adopting  the  Hebrew  language  from  the  natives  of 
Canaan  whom  they  finally  dispossessed,  or  from  whom  they 
inherited  (the  Hebrew  word  used  for  taking  possession  of  the 
country  has  both  of  these  meanings). 

The  Tel  el-Amarna  letters  show  that  in  the  fourteenth 
"century  B.C.  the  Babylonian  script  and  the  Babylonian 
language  were  lingua  franca  for  the  whole  region  from 
Babylonia  westward  and  northward  to  the  Mediterranean. 
Apparently  a  condition  existed  similar  to  that  in  Europe  in 
the  middle  ages,  when  Latin  was  the  language  of  written 
communication  and  the  monks  were  the  scribes.  The  ver- 
nacular was  not  used  for  writing,  and  on  the  other  hand,  Latin 
was  understood  by  few  besides  the  scribes  who  wrote  it.     As 


ARCH^OLOGICAL   RESULTS  247 

it  was  with  Latin  in  Europe  in  the  fourteenth  century  a.d.,  so 
it  was  with  Babylonian  in  Asia  in  the  fourteenth  century  b.c. 

But  the  Babylonian  script  was  not  the  only  writing  in  use  in 
the  world  at  that  time.  Egypt  had  had  for  ages  an  inde- 
pendent hieroglyphic  script  of  its  own.  The  Hittites,  also,  in 
central  Asia  Minor  and  Armenia,  stretching  down  into  Syria, 
had  a  peculiar  writing  of  their  own,  many  monuments  in 
which  have  been  discovered,  but  not  yet  deciphered.  In 
Crete,  and  perhaps  also  on  the  neighbouring  shores  of  Asia 
Minor,  if  not  in  Greece,  another  system  of  writing,  apparently 
of  independent  origin,  was  in  use  at  the  same  period.  In 
these  regions  there  existed  a  highly  developed  civilisation, 
pottery  decoration  had  attained  a  high  grade  of  excellence,  and 
painting  and  sculpture  were  freely  used. 

It  was  at  this  period,  the  second  half  of  the  second  millen- 
nium B.C.  that,  according  to  its  own  tradition,  the  people  of 
Israel  came  into  being.  Under  the  guidance  of  Moses,  the 
tribes  of  Israel,  who  had  been  enslaved  in  Egypt,  were  welded 
into  a  nation,  which,  marching  out  of  the  Sinaitic  Desert,  took 
possession  of  the  country  east  of  the  Jordan.  Under  Moses' 
successor,  Joshua,  they  entered  Palestine,  but  did  not  finally 
become  real  masters  of  the  entire  country  until  the  time  of 
David,  about  b.c.  iooo.  Before  the  time  of  Moses,  according 
to  the  traditions  gathered  together  in  the  books  of  Genesis 
and  Exodus,  the  ancestors  of  the  Hebrews  had  been  bedawin 
Syrians,  who  had  wandered  gradually  downward  from  Meso- 
potamia through  Syria  and  Palestine  and  so  on  to  Egypt, 
where  they  had  been  enslaved. 

Besides  the  accounts  of  the  ancestors  of  the  Hebrews, 
Genesis  also  contains  other  legends  and  traditions,  about  the 
creation  of  the  world,  the  origin  of  evil,  the  inventions  of 
civilisation,  the  division  of  languages,  etc.  We  were  already 
familiar  from  Phoenician  fragments  with  the  Phcenician  forms 
of  some  of  these  stories.  Babylonian  and  Assyrian  dis- 
coveries have  given  us  the  Babylonian  forms  of  others,  and 
especially  of  the  Flood  legend.  The  material  at  present  at 
our  disposal  does  not  enable  us  to  determine  to  what  extent 


248   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

we  have  here  race  traditions  common  to  a  number  of  peoples 
and  belonging  to  the  ancestors  of  Babylonians,  Phoenicians, 
and  Hebrews  alike,  and  to  what  extent  these  stories  are  due  to 
tha  direct  or  indirect  influences  of  Babylonia  on  Phoenicia  and 
Canaan  (for  the  Canaanites,  from  what  we  know,  may  be 
supposed  to  have  been  substantially  one  with  the  Phoenicians 
in  their  religion,  mythology,  etc.).  As  to  the  historical 
character  of  such  material  as  cosmogonies,  civilisation  myths, 
and  the  like,  archaeology  will  presumably  never  have  anything 
to  say,  except  in  a  negative  manner.  The  race  traditions, 
however,  are  so  far  substantiated  by  archaeological  discoveries 
that  we  now  have  reason  to  suppose  that  in  the  second  millen- 
nium B.C.  the  Aramaeans  were  pressing,  or  being  pressed 
southward  into  southern  Syria  and  were  roaming  among  the 
settled  population  of  Palestine,  or  in  organised  bands  seeking 
to  obtain  permanent  foothold  there.  The  Moabites,  Ammon- 
ites, and  Edomites,  kindred  peoples  with  the  Hebrews,  were 
parts  of  this  Aramaean  invasion,  which  developed  a  national 
life  and  acquired  settled  habitations  before  the  Hebrews.  Like 
the  latter,  they  adopted  the  language  of  Canaan  in  place  of 
their  native  Aramaean.  So  far  as  our  information  goes  it  is 
consistent  with  the  Hebrew  representation  of  the  ancestors  of 
the  race  as  Syrian  nomads  (Deut.  xxvi.  5),  wandering  down 
from  Mesopotamia  through  Palestine  and  into  Egypt.  One 
strange  chapter  of  the  Book  of  Genesis  (xiv.)  tells  of  a 
conquering  expedition  of  Elamite  and  Babylonian  kings 
against  the  kings  of  the  Jordan  valley,  and  of  the  surprise 
and  discomfiture  of  the  conquerors  by  Abraham  the  Hebrew. 
Babylonian  records  show  us  that  such  an  expedition  might 
well  have  been  undertaken  in  the  latter  part  of  the  third 
millennium  B.C.,  under  the  king  of  Elam  as  overlord.  The 
relations  of  Elam  and  the  Babylonian  cities  mentioned  are 
correct  for  that  period,  and  the  names  used  have  either  been 
found  or  are  probable  and  correctly  formed  names.  We  have, 
however,  found  no  record  of  this  invasion,  or  of  such  a  defeat 
of  Elamites  and  Babylonians,  or  of  the  name  of  Abraham,  or 
of  the  names  of  the  kings  and  cities  of  the   Jordan  valley 


ARCH^OLOGICAL   RESULTS  249 

mentioned  in  Genesis  xiv.  It  has  been  suggested  that  we 
have  here  an  historical  incident,  borrowed  by  a  Jewish  writer 
from  a  Babylonian  tablet  and  woven  into  the  history  of  the 
Hebrew  patriarch  Abraham.  For  the  full  solution  of  the 
problem  of  Genesis  xiv.  we  must  apparently  await  further 
discoveries. 

In  spite  of  the  important  part  which  Egypt  plays  in  early 
Hebrew  tradition,  Egyptian  discoveries  have  yielded  little  of 
importance  for  the  elucidation  of  the  Old  Testament.  We 
find  Semitic  nomads  in  the  borderland  of  Egypt,  and  Semites 
at  one  period  (the  reigns  of  Amenophis  III.  and  IV.)  possess- 
ing great  influence  at  the  Egyptian  court;  then  a  change  of 
dynasty  takes  place,  the  Semitic  influence  is  overthrown,  and 
the  Semites  in  Egypt  are  oppressed.  This  would  agree  with 
the  representations  in  Genesis  and  Exodus  of  the  favour  en- 
joyed by  Joseph,  if  we  can  place  him  under  Amenophis  IV., 
and  the  oppression  of  Israel  if  we  may  ascribe  that  to  the 
following  Ramesside  dynasty.  The  discovery  of  the  store-city 
of  Pithom,  in  Goshen,  built  under  Rameses,  seems  to  sub- 
stantiate the  historical  accuracy  of  the  statement  in  Genesis  .- 
that  such  places  were  built  by  the  Hebrew  captives,  and  to 
point  out  the  Ramessides  as  the  Pharaoh  of  the  oppression. 
The  Pharaoh  of  the  Exodus,  according  to  this  scheme,  would 
then  be  Merenphtah  or  Mernephtah.  The  only  direct  mention 
of  Israel  on  an  Egyptian  monument  occurs  in  an  inscription 
of  this  monarch,  and  appears  at  first  sight  to  overthrow  the 
theory  set  forth  above.  He  is  recording  his  victories,  and 
in  the  list  of  the  peoples  of  Syria  and  Palestine  vanquished 
by  him  he  mentions  Israel,  saying,  "The  people  of  Israel 
is  spoiled ;  it  hath  no  seed."  This  is  not  an  absolute  proof 
that  the  people  of  Israel  were  settled  inhabitants  of  Canaan 
at  that  period,  but  it  certainly  looks  in  that  direction.  As 
in  the  case  of  the  Abraham  story  of  Genesis  xiv.  above  re- 
ferred to,  the  question  arises  whether  later  Jewish  writers 
have  not  made  use  of  their  knowledge  of  Egyptian  history 
to  attempt  to  fit  into  that  history  IsraeHte  tradition.  In  the 
case  of  the  story  of  Joseph,  in  Genesis,  for  instance,   where 


250  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

we  have  a  great  deal  of  local  Egyptian  colouring,  it  is  notice- 
able that,  so  far  as  our  present  knowledge  enables  us  to  deter- 
mine, the  proper  names  belong,  not  to  the  supposed  period  of 
Joseph,  but  to  about  the  tenth  century  B.C.,  the  time  of 
Solomon,  when  Egypt  and  Palestine  were  in  close  communica- 
tion, and  the  Hebrews  were  beginning  to  write  down  their 
history  and  the  traditions  of  their  past.  The  suggestion  is 
strong  that,  whatever  tradition  may  lie  behind  it,  the  story 
of  Joseph  was  written  at  that  time.  Moreover,  the  story  of 
Joseph's  temptation,  his  continence  in  the  face  of  trial,  and 
his  imprisonment  under  the  false  accusation  of  his  employer's 
wife,  are  singularly  reminiscent  of  the  Egyptian  story  of  the 
two  brothers.  The  light  thrown  by  Egyptian  discovery  on 
the  residence  of  Israel  in  Egypt  and  its  exodus  from  Egypt  is 
so  far  only  sufficient  to  make  us  aware  of  serious  problems, 
which  we  cannot  yet  solve. 

Egyptian  discoveries  seem,  as  I  shall  endeavour  to  show  in 
another  chapter,  to  have  elucidated  the  origin  of  the  Ark  and 
of  the  Decalogue.  For  the  references  to  Egyptian  alliances, 
matrimonial  connexions,  invasions,  etc.,  contained  in  the 
books  of  Kings,  Chronicles,  Isaiah,  and  Jeremiah,  we  have 
found  no  confirmation  from  the  Egyptian  monuments,  and 
indeed  no  allusions  of  any  description  to  Israel  or  Judah,  nor, 
in  fact,  anything  which  throws  light,  except  in  the  most  in- 
direct manner,  on  the  external  relations  of  Egypt  during 
that  period. 

For  the  customs  and  culture  of  the  Israelites  we  have  been 
enabled,  on  the  principle  of  the  "  unchanging  East,"  to  obtain 
much  light  from  modern  Oriental  customs,  both  in  and  out  of 
Palestine,  and  from  Babylonian,  Egyptian,  and  Arabian  monu- 
ments, inscriptions,  and  writings,  both  ancient  and  modern. 
In  the  history  of  the  religious  development  of  Israel  we  have 
been  able,  through  the  assistance  largely  of  archaeology,  to 
derive  much  information  from  the  kindred  and  neighbouring 
nations.  For  the  earliest  period  the  pre-Islamic  remains  of 
Arabia  furnish  the  counterparts  to  early  Hebrew  uses  and 
ideas.     For  later  periods  many  suggestions  have  come  to  the 


ARCHAEOLOGICAL   RESULTS  251 

Bible  student  from  discoveries  in  various  fields,  such  as  the 
Marseilles  sacrificial  tablet,  which  shows  a  kinship  in  ritual 
prescriptions  and  ritual  names  with  the  Hebrew.  Babylonian 
ceremonial  laws  also  show  a  striking  resemblance  in  certain 
particulars  to  the  Hebrew  Levitical  legislation.  Egyptian  and 
Babylonian  poems  have  revealed  to  us  an  identity  of  poetical 
construction  in  Egyptian,  Babylonian,  and  Hebrew,  while  we 
find  both  Babylonians  and  Israelites  making  use  in  their 
religious  poetry  of  identical  or  similar  technical  expressions, 
like  the  "how  long,"  and  some  of  the  same  religious  ideas 
appear  in  both  Babylonian  and  Hebrew  psalms,  like  the  "  secret 
faults,"  referred  to  in  another  chapter. 

Now  and  then  archaeological  discoveries  instead  of  re- 
solving difficulties  present  fresh  problems,  like  the  discovery 
in  Egyptian  inscriptions  of  the  names  Joseph-el  and  Jacob-el 
in  Palestine  in  the  third  millennium  B.C.,  or  the  discovery  of 
the  existence  of  Jerusalem  under  that  name  in  the  fourteenth 
century  B.C.  (which  may,  however,  fall  in  with  the  story  of 
Melchizedek,  priest-king  of  Salem,  in  Genesis  xiv.).  Some  of 
these  discoveries  raise  rather  than  answer  questions  with 
regard  both  to  the  literary  and  religious  development  of 
Israel.  We  find  the  Babylonians  having,  from  the  very  earliest 
period,  penitential  psalms,  strikingly  similar,  not  merely  in 
metre,  but  also  in  conception  and  sometimes  phraseology  to 
some  of  the  Hebrew  psalms.  Are  we  to  suppose  that  the 
Hebrews  were  influenced  at  a  late  date  by  the  Babylonians 
in  the  matter  of  psalmody  ?  or  are  these  resemblances  due  to 
development  from  a  common  source,  or  to  earlier  Babylonian 
influence? — since  we  know  that  Babylon  was  the  dominant 
influence  in  Palestine  from  B.C.  4000  to  a  period  shortly  before 
the  Hebrew  invasion  and  conquest. 

It  will  be  observed  that  the  archaeological  material  which 
the  Old  Testament  critic  has  at  his  disposal  is  almost  altogether 
the  result  of  researches  in  other  countries  than  Palestine. 
Palestine  has  been  admirably  mapped  and  surveyed  west  of 
the  Jordan,  and  in  part  east  of  that  stream.  The  surface 
remains  have  been  noted  and  the  evidence  of  names  made 


252   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

use  of  with  remarkable  success  for  the  identification  of  ancient 
sites.     As  a  result  we  know  the  location  of  the  larger  part 
of  the  places  mentioned  in  the  Old  Testament,  and  of  almost 
all  of  those  which  possessed  historical  importance.     It  has 
become  possible  to  write  a  historical  geography  of  Palestine, 
and  Professor  G.  A.  Smith  has  pointed  out  that  our  geogra- 
phical knowledge  of  the  country  may  be  successfully  used  for 
critical  purposes,  and  that  so  far  as  the  Hexateuch  is  con- 
cerned the  geographical  identifications  support  in  general  the 
position  of   the   literary  critics.      Little,  however,  has   been 
done  in  the  way  of  excavation,  and  the  results  of  the  ex- 
cavations which  have  been  undertaken  have  been  disappoint- 
ingly meagre.     The  excavations  which  have  been  conducted 
at    Lachish,    Jerusalem,    Azekah,    Gath,    and    a    couple    of 
unidentified   sites   show   us   that   fortified    towns    existed    in 
Palestine  from  about  the  eighteenth  century  onward,  and  that 
the  country  was,  in  those  earlier  days,  in  close  connexion  with 
Egypt,    which    corresponds    with    the    information    obtained 
from  the  Egyptian  monuments.     We  find,  also,  fortifications 
and  reconstructions  of  those  cities  which  may  be  supposed 
to  correspond  with  certain  periods  of  Bible  history.     A  few 
inscribed  seals  and  pottery  handles  have  been  discovered  in 
these  excavations,  indicating  conditions  of  civilisation  which 
would  correspond  in  a  general  way  with  the  Bible  account; 
but  no  inscriptions  have  been  found  bearing  directly  on  the 
Bible  narrative  (unless  the  pottery  handles  with  royal  inscrip- 
tions found  at  some  of  the  sites  excavated  elucidate  and  confirm 
the  obscure  passage,   i   Chron.  iv.   23),  except  the  inscribed 
stele  found  on  the  surface  of  the  ground  at  Dhiban  in  Moab, 
of   Mesha,    a   contemporary   of   Ahab,   which   confirms   and 
throws  further  light  on  the  Bible  account  of  the  relations  of 
Israel  to  Moab,  giving  us  the  history  of  those  relations,  how- 
ever, from  quite  a  different  point  of  view.     The  Siloah  in- 
scription, from  the  water-tunnel  under  the  hill  of  Ophel,  a 
private  inscription  made  by  the  workmen  who  cut  the  tunnel, 
is  interesting  palseographically,  and  as  showing  a  fairly  com- 
mon   use   of    writing,    but    is    absolutely   without    reference, 


ARCHAEOLOGICAL   RESULTS  253 

historical  or  religious,  and   is  of  somewhat  uncertain  date. 
From  the  New  Testament  times  we  have  only  the  important 
Barrier  inscription  from  the  Temple.     From  Palestine  itself, 
then,  we  have  practically  nothing  in   the  way  of   inscribed 
records.     Until  such  records  are  obtained— and  it  may  be 
assumed  with  a  reasonable  degree  of  confidence  that  such 
records  will  be  found,  for  the  period  before  the  Exile,  by 
excavations  in  Palestine,  and  for  the   period   following  the 
Exile,  in  part,  at  least,  by  excavations  in  Babylonia— we  have 
little  or  no  documentary  or  monumental  material  with  which 
to   check   the  literary  results   of  the   critics.     A  few  dated 
records-a  couple   of   hymns,  a  few  laws,  a  letter  such  as 
Jeremiah  wrote  to  the  people  in  Babylonia  or  the  people  m 
Babylonia  wrote  to  Jeremiah— would  give  us  a  definite  fixed 
basis  from  which  to  work,  something  by  which  to  check  the 
conclusions  as  to  date  which  are  now  based  and  must,  in  our 
present  knowledge,  be  based  largely  on  subjective  data. 

To  sum  up  the  position  at  the  present  moment,  our  arch^o- 
logical  light  on  the  Old  Testament  has  come  from  foreign 
lands  and   foreign   hands,  and  we  have   practically  nothing 

from  Palestine.  .  ,     •       •     ^u 

From  Egypt  what  we  have  obtained  is  perplexing  in  the 
extreme  The  monuments  do  not  necessarily  contradict  the 
Hebrew  records  as  to  the  earlier  periods,  but  neither  can  we 
say  with  any  certainty  that  they  support  the  Bible  narrative. 
This  I  say  in  deprecation  of  the  statements,  published  from 
time  to  time,  that  archeology  has  proved  the  truth  of  the 
Bible  story.     Sucn  statements  are  misleading. 

Somewhat  the  same  caution  is  needed  with  regard  to  the 
discoveries  from  Babylonian  sources,  as  they  bear  on  the  early 
Hebrew  narrative.  We  have  gained  from  those  inscnp  ions 
most  important  information  with  regard  to  the  early  relations 
rBabylonia,  and  even  of  Elam  to  the  West-land  but  to  say 
that  for  example,  the  truth  of  the  narrative  in  Genesis  xiv. 
Tl^Mvurs^^  and  defeat  of  the  four  allied  kings)  is 
itoved  by  Babylonian  records  is  dangerously  misleading^ 
We  have,  as  the  result  of  Assyrian  excavations,  Babylonian 


254   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

cosmogonies,  civilisation  myths,  a  Flood  legend,  and  the  like, 
which  are  in  many  respects  strikingly  similar  to  the  accounts 
of  the  Creation,  the  Flood,  etc.,  in  the  first  part  of  Genesis. 
We  had  already  literary  fragments  containing  similar  material 
from  Phoenicia,  still  more  strikingly  similar,  as  far  as  it  went, 
to  the  Bible.  Assyriologists  point  out  singular  resemblances 
in  fact  and  phraseology  between  the  Babylonian  ceremonial 
laws  and  the  Levitical  legislation  of  the  Hebrews,  while  the 
discovery  of  a  few  Phoenician  antiquities  and  inscriptions  has 
revealed  an  even  more  singular  resemblance  between  certain 
Hebrew  and  Phcenician  rites  and  rules.  Were  these  things 
part  of  a  common  inheritance  ?  Are  the  resemblances  due  to 
early  Babylonian  domination  in  the  West-land?  Are  they 
due  to  later  contact  with  and  influence  of  Phoenicians  and 
Canaanites  or  Assyrians  and  Babylonians  on  Israelites  and 
Jews  ?  Are  they  due  partly  to  one  and  partly  to  another  of 
these  causes  ? 

With  the  matter  of  writing  I  deal  in  another  chapter.  The 
problem  of  the  language,  the  script  and  the  material  in  or  on 
which  the  Old  Testament  was  written  is  a  most  interesting 
one,  and  important  both  as  to  the  date  of  the  writings  and 
the  preservation  of  the  contents. 

In  conclusion,  let  me  add  that  some  well-meaning  apologists 
for  the  Bible,  in  laying  before  the  religious  public  the  story 
of  the  marvellous  increase  of  our  knowledge  of  antiquity  as 
a  result  of  the  discoveries  of  the  last  sixty  years,  have  pre- 
sented a  picture  of  the  conditions  of  the  early  Hebrews  not 
borne  out  by  the  facts  and  quite  contrary  to  the  statements  of 
the  Bible.  Because  Egypt  and  Syria  and  Babylonia  were 
civilised,  it  does  not  follow  that  the  Hebrews  of  Moses'  time 
and  their  ancestors  of  the  patriarchal  period,  although  living 
by  and  in  those  countries,  were  familiar  with  their  culture  and 
their  arts.  They  are  represented  in  the  Bible  as  like  the 
bedawin  Arabs,  who  wander  through  or  live  in  those  countries 
to-day,  and  are  yet  absolutely  untouched  by  their  civilisation. 
The  Hebrews  dwelt  in  Egypt  for  generations,  and  there  is  no 
trace  of  Egyptian  influence  in  their  customs,  laws,  rites,  or 


ARCH^OLOGICAL   RESULTS  255 

religion,  except  possibly  in  the  Ark  and  the  Decalogue,  both 
attributed  to  Moses,  who  alone  of  the  Hebrews  is  represented 
in  the  Bible  story  as  entering  into  any  intimate  relation  with 
the  Egyptians.  As  bedawm  the  Hebrews  entered  Egypt,  as 
bedawin  they  came  out.  As  bedawin  they  invaded  Canaan. 
There  first  they  acquired  their  civilisation,  but  not  their 
religion.  Such  is  the  Bible  representation.  To  give  us 
pictures  of  Babylonian  or  Egyptian  civilisation  in  those  early 
days  is  beside  the  point.  Our  best  analogy  at  present  for 
the  conditions  of  the  Hebrews  before  the  invasion  of  Canaan 
is  what  little  we  have  been  able  to  learn  of  pre-Islamic  Arabia. 
Probably  we  shall  never  find  archaeological  remains  or  in- 
scriptions from,  or  bearing  primarily  upon  this  earliest  period. 
For  the  period  after  the  invasion  of  Canaan  it  would  seem 
that  we  ought,  as  a  result  of  sufficient  excavating,  to  find 
remains,  monuments,  and  inscriptions  in  Palestine  which  will 
illustrate  and  expand  the  Bible  narrative  in  the  same  way  that 
excavations  in  Greece  and  Italy  have  illustrated  Greek  and 
Roman  literature  and  expanded  our  knowledge  of  the  history 
of  those  countries. 


CHAPTER   XI 

HOW   THE   OLD   TESTAMENT   WAS 
WRITTEN 

II.     ON    WHAT? 

IN  Jeremiah  xxxii.  ii  and  following  verses  we  have  an 
account  of  the  use  of  clay  tablets  for  contract  purposes 
among  the  Jews  in  the  time  immediately  preceding  the 
destruction  of  Jerusalem  by  the  Babylonians,  that  is,  the 
beginning  of  the  sixth  century  B.C.  To  be  sure  neither 
the  translation  in  the  King  James  nor  yet  that  in  the 
Revised  Version  gives  any  hint  of  this.  The  former  renders 
the  eleventh  verse,  "So  I  took  the  evidence  of  the  pur- 
chase, both  that  which  was  sealed  according  to  the  law  and 
custom,  and  that  which  was  open."  The  latter  thus,  "So 
I  took  the  deed  of  the  purchase,"  etc.,  almost  exactly  as  in 
the  earlier  version.  Literally,  word  for  word,  the  Hebrew 
reads,  "And  I  took  the  deed  (book)  of  purchase  the  closed 
the  commandment  and  the  statutes  and  the  open."  This 
manifestly  makes  no  sense ;  nor,  for  that  matter,  do  the 
translations  of  the  King  James  and  Revised  Versions. 
The  Greek  text  of  this  verse  reads,  according  to  Swete's 
text,  "  And  I  took  the  deed  of  purchase,  the  sealed " ;  to 
which  the  Sinaitic  and  Alexandrine  texts  add,  "and  the  pub- 
lished," or  "read  aloud,"  which  was,  I  think,  part  of  the 
original  Septuagint  translation,  omitted  in  the  Vatican  text 
because  of  its  unintelligibility  to  the  scribe.  The  Septuagint 
did  not  have  "the  commandment  and  the  statutes,"  and  "the 

256 


HOW  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  WAS  WRITTEN     257 

open  "  or  "revealed,"  which  are  added  in  some  of  the  inferior 
later  texts,  manifestly  out  of  our  Masoretic  Hebrew  text. 
A  comparison  of  the  Septuagint  Greek  with  our  Masoretic 
Hebrew  suggests,  then,  that  the  words,  "the  commandment 
and  the  statutes,"  were  not  part  of  the  original  text.  This 
suggestion  becomes  practically  a  certainty  when  we  compare, 
in  the  Hebrew  original,  verse  14,  which  repeats  verse  11 
without  the  words  in  question,  thus,  "Take  these  writings, 
this  deed  of  purchase,  both  the  closed  and  this  open  record, 
and  put  them  in  an  earthen  vessel,  that  they  may  endure 
many  days."  The  Greek  reads,  "  Take  this  deed  of  purchase 
and  the  deed  that  is  published  (or  read  aloud),"  etc. 

The  direction  to  "put  them  in  an  earthen  vessel"  first 
gave  me  the  clue  to  the  meaning  of  the  whole.  Hanameel 
ben  Shallum,  Jeremiah's  cousin,  came  to  Jeremiah  while 
the  latter  was  imprisoned  in  the  Temple,  during  the  siege 
of  Jerusalem  by  the  Babylonians,  and  called  upon  the  latter 
to  buy  his  property  without  the  walls,  at  Anathoth,  in  accord- 
ance with  the  law  of  redemption.  The  deed  of  sale, 
described  as  above,  and  subscribed  by  a  number  of  witnesses, 
Jeremiah  caused  to  be  buried  in  an  earthen  jar.  Now  this 
is  precisely  what  the  Babylonians  used  to  do  not  infrequently 
with  their  deeds  and  records,  where  they  wished  to  preserve 
them  with  great  care.  I  have  found  at  Nippur  deeds  buried 
in  the  earth  in  earthenware  jars,  as  here  described ;  but  those 
deeds  were  on  clay  tablets.  Ordinarily  a  deed  or  a  record 
on  a  clay  tablet  was  single.  The  clay  tablet,  anywhere  from 
one  to  twelve  inches  or  even  more  in  length,  was  inscribed 
with  the  terms  of  the  contract  or  deed,  to  which  were  attached 
the  names  of  a  number  of  witnesses  and  seals.  These  clay 
tablet  contracts  were  ordinarily  baked  in  the  sun ;  sometimes 
they  were  burned  in  a  kiln.  Where  particular  care  was 
desired  the  tablet  was  inclosed  in  an  envelope  of  clay,  on 
which  envelope  the  terms  of  the  contract  were  again  recorded, 
and  the  names  of  witnesses  and  seals  attached. 

The  outer  and  inner  records  do  not,  in  any  case  with  which 
I  am  familiar,  correspond  word  for  word,  but  for  the  substance 


258   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

one  is  a  repetition  of  the  other.  A  comparison  of  the 
Hebrew  and  Greek  accounts  of  the  transaction  between 
Jeremiah  and  Hanameel  will,  I  think,  convince  the  reader 
that  the  similarity  to  Babylonian  methods  extends  further 
than  the  burial  of  the  deed  in  a  clay  jar.  Assume  that  the 
material  on  which  the  record  of  purchase  was  written  was 
clay — a  clay  tablet — and  the  passage  as  it  stands,  or  at  least 
as  it  stood  in  the  original  text  before  it  received  the  addition 
which  we  now  have  in  the  Hebrew  in  verse  ii,  that  is,  the 
words,  "  the  commandment  and  the  statutes,"  becomes  plain 
at  once.  Because  the  record  was  to  be  preserved  with  especial 
care,  therefore  it  was  recorded  not  on  a  single  tablet,  but  on 
what  is  known,  in  the  parlance  of  Assyriology,  as  a  case 
tablet,  that  is,  as  described  above,  a  clay  tablet  covered  with 
an  envelope  of  clay,  on  which  envelope  the  substance  of  the 
deed  within,  the  names  of  witnesses,  and  the  like  were 
recorded.  "The  open  and  the  closed"  are  two  parts  of 
the  same  thing,  the  one  the  duplicate  of  the  other. 

We  have  here,  then,  a  notice  of  the  use  of  clay  tablets  for 
the  purpose  of  contracts,  deeds,  and  the  like  among  the 
Hebrews  in  the  time  of  Jeremiah.  The  passage  became 
unintelligible  to  the  later  scribes,  after  the  use  of  clay  tablets 
was  given  up.  Apparently  it  was  already  unintelligible  at  the 
time  when  the  Greek  translation  was  made.  Nevertheless, 
that  translation  preserved  literally  what  was  found  in  the 
Hebrew,  although  translating  with  evident  lack  of  apprecia- 
tion of  the  meaning  of  the  Hebrew  words. 

At  a  later  date  the  Hebrew  text  in  verse  1 1  was  corrupted 
by  the  insertion  of  a  pietistic  gloss,  which  some  scribe  had 
written  on  the  margin.  This  scribe  was  apparently  seeking 
to  find  the  hidden  religious  meaning  in  the  words,  so  dark 
to  him,  "the  open  and  the  closed."  The  same  word  for 
"closed"  occurs,  so  far  at  least  as  the  consonants  are  con- 
cerned, in  Isaiah  viii.  i6,  where  Isaiah  is  directed  to  "seal 
(or  close)  the  law"  in  his  disciples.  This  suggested  to  the 
scribe  a  reference  in  the  dark  passage  to  "the  law,"  that 
is,  "the  commandment  and  the  statutes,"  and  he  wrote  on 


HOW  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  WAS  WRITTEN     259 

the  margin,  or  above  the  line,  those  words,  which  later  crept 
into  the  text.  Such  pietistic  glosses,  be  it  said,  are  not 
uncommon  in  the  Hebrew  text  of  the  Prophets. 

While  this  passage  gives  evidence  of  the  use  of  clay  tablets 
for  contracts,  it  also  shows  that  at  the  time  when  the  Hebrew 
text  assumed  its  final  shape,  such  a  use  of  clay  tablets  as 
writing  material  was  no  longer  known,  the  unintelligible  form 
in  which  the  passage  appears  in  our  Bible  being  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  scribes  were  not  acquainted  with  the  method 
of  writing  and  preserving  contracts  referred  to.  In  the 
original  the  contract  was  described  as  written  on  a  tablet 
of  clay.  This  was  covered  with  an  envelope  of  clay,  also 
inscribed,  and  the  whole  was  buried  in  the  earth  in  a  clay 
jar.  The  same  use  of  clay  tablets  for  documentary  purposes 
seems  to  be  referred  to  in  Job  xiv.  17,  the  correct  translation 
of  which  is,  I  think,  "  Shut  up  in  a  packet  is  my  transgression, 
and  Thou  smearest  (clay)  over  mine  iniquity."  That  is,  God 
has  written  the  record  of  Job's  transgressions,  and  inclosed  it 
in  an  envelope  of  clay.  He  has  put  it  in  what  Assyriologists 
know  as  a  "case  tablet." 

The  Tel  el-Amarna  tablets,  found  in  Egypt  a  dozen  years 
ago,  are  evidence  of  the  use  of  clay  tablets  for  purposes  of 
official  correspondence  in  Palestine  and  Syria,  as  well  as 
Babylonia,  in  the  fourteenth  century  B.C.  The  discovery 
of  one  clay  tablet  in  the  Mound  of  Tel  Hesy,  presum- 
ably the  ancient  Lachish,  by  Dr.  Bliss,  excavating  for  the 
Palestine  Exploration  Fund,  a  half-dozen  years  later,  con- 
firmed this  evidence  for  Palestine.  We  have,  then,  clay 
tablets  in  use  in  Palestine  for  purposes  of  official  correspon- 
dence in  the  fourteenth  century  B.C.,  before  the  Hebrews 
entered  Palestine ;  and  we  have  clay  tablets  in  use  among  the 
Jews  for  the  purpose  of  contracts  at  the  beginning  of  the  sixth 
century  B.C. 

Now  this  use  of  clay  tablets  was  the  use  common  in 
Babylonia  and  Assyria  and  the  countries  under  Babylonian 
or  Assyrian  influence.  We  find  clay  tablets  in  use  north- 
ward in  Armenia,  and  as  far  to  the  north-west  certainly  as 


26o    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Cappadocia  in  Asia  Minor,  not  to  speak  of  their  use  in  Syria 
and  Palestine,  as  attested  by  the  discoveries  at  Tel  el-Amarna. 
Recent  excavations  at  Cnossos,  in  Crete,  reveal  a  similar  use 
in  the  islands  of  the  ALgea.n.  In  Babylonia  and  Assyria 
these  tablets  were  used  for  all  purposes  involving  writing, 
that  is,  not  only  for  contracts,  letters,  and  archives,  but  also 
for  books.  A  book  might  consist  of  one  tablet  or  of  a  con- 
siderable number  of  tablets.  In  the  latter  case  the  tablets 
were  arranged  with  headings  and  numbers,  and  the  last  words 
of  one  tablet  were  repeated  at  the  beginning  of  the  next, 
so  as  to  secure  the  proper  arrangement  and  to  show  what 
tablets  belonged  together  to  constitute  one  composition.  No 
direct  evidence  has  yet  been  given  that  clay  tablets  were  used 
as  books,  that  is,  compositions  of  a  literary  character,  outside 
of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  unless  the  Cretan  tablets  above 
referred  to  should  furnish  that  evidence.  The  clay  tablets 
found  in  Cappadocia,  Syria,  and  Egypt  are  letters,  contracts, 
and  the  like.  It  is  merely  an  inference  from  the  use  of  clay 
tablets  for  books  in  Babylonia  and  Assyria  that  they  may  have 
been  so  used  also  in  the  other  countries  which  borrowed  from 
them  the  custom  of  writing  on  clay  tablets. 

While  we  find  this  use  of  clay  tablets  as  writing  material  in 
Babylonia  and  in  Egypt,  on  the  other  hand,  except  for  the 
Tel  el-Amarna  records  above  noted,  we  find  the  use  of 
papyrus  and  other  similar  substances,  which  were  inscribed 
with  ink  by  means  of  a  pen.  This  method  of  writing  Egypt 
finally  taught  the  world,  even  Babylon  ultimately  abandoning 
the  use  of  clay  tablets  to  accept  in  their  stead  the  parchment, 
or  papyrus,  and  ink,  which  had  become  universal  everywhere. 
But  until  a  late  period  Babylonia  stood  for  the  use  of  clay 
tablets  incised  by  a  stylus,  and  Egypt  for  the  use  of  pen  and 
ink. 

There  is  still  one  other  material  that  was  used  for  writing 
both  in  Babylonia  and  Egypt,  namely,  stone ;  but  for  practical 
purposes  books  cannot  be  written  on  stone.  Inscriptions 
giving  the  records  of  victories,  or  containing  codes  of  laws, 
may  be  written  on  stone  or  metal,  however,  and  have  been  so 


HOW  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  WAS  WRITTEN     261 

written  in  various  lands  and  countries.  Hebrew  tradition  says 
that  the  most  ancient  Hebrew  laws,  those  of  the  Decalogue, 
were  inscribed  on  stone  tablets  (Exod.  xxxi.  18;  Deut.  ix.  9). 
One  need  not  think  of  large  stones  of  a  monumental  shape, 
such  as  are  represented  in  the  paintings  in  our  churches  and 
galleries.  Such  large  tables  containing  laws  or  ritual  regula- 
tions have  existed  at  various  places,  it  is  true.  Tables  of  this 
character  were  discovered  at  Marseilles  and  in  Crete,  and  we 
have  reason  to  suppose  that  both  the  Romans  and  the  Greeks 
made  use  of  similar  tables.  Perhaps  there  may  have  been 
tables  of  that  sort  erected  at  some  time  or  another  in  the 
Hebrew  temples;  but  so  far  as  the  Ten  Commandments  are 
concerned,  the  accounts  contained  in  Exodus  and  Deuter- 
onomy suggest  that  they  were  originally  written  on  small 
tablets,  eight,  ten,  or  twelve  inches  in  length,  which  could  be 
readily  contained  in  a  box,  and  carried  from  place  to  place,  as 
we  are  told  was  the  earlier  custom  in  Israel.  Such  small 
tablets  of  stone  have  been  found  from  time  to  time  in  Baby- 
lonia. I  recall  one  beautiful  specimen  fourid  by  us  at  Nippur, 
containing  a  list  of  garments  dedicated  in  the  temple  of  Bel, 
or  contained  in  the  temple  treasury. 

The  same  word  which  is  used  to  describe  the  stone  tablets 
of  the  Decalogue  in  Exodus  xxxi.  18  and  Deuteronomy  ix.  9 
is  used  in  reference  to  wooden  tablets,  panels,  or  planks,  in 
other  passages  in  the  Bible.  In  i  Kings  vii.  36  the  word  is 
used  for  the  plates  or  panels  on  the  top  of  the  bases  of  the 
molten  sea  or  bath  constructed  for  the  Temple  at  Jerusalem, 
on  which  were  engraved  cherubim,  lions,  or  palm  trees, 
''according  to  the  space  of  each."  In  Canticles  viii.  9  the 
word  is  used  to  mean  the  panels  or  planks  of  a  door,  and  in 
Ezekiel  xxvii.  5  it  is  the  planks  of  a  ship.  In  Habakkuk  ii.  2 
the  same  word  is  used  to  describe  the  "  tables  "  on  which  the 
prophet  is  to  write  his  vision,  in  such  a  manner  that  "he  may 
run  that  readeth  it."  The  word  for  "write,"  used  in  this  last 
passage,  seems  to  have  meant  primarily,  "  to  dig  "  or  "  cut  into." 
It  is  only  used  here  and  in  Deuteronomy  i.  5  and  xxvii.  8.  In 
the  latter  passage  it  means  clearly  to  engrave,  or  cut  in  stone, 


262    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

but  in  Deuteronomy  i.  5  its  sense  would  seem  to  be  more 
general.  It  is  usually  rendered  to  ''  declare,"  or  "  set  forth  "  ; 
but  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  in  the  original  it  meant 
"write."  The  word,  as  stated  above,  should  mean,  from  its 
derivation,  "cut  into,"  that  is,  inscribe  with  a  chisel  or  a 
stylus,  rather  than  write  with  a  pen.  The  thought  in  the  mind 
of  the  writer  of  Habakkuk  ii.  2  was  clearly  engraving,  or  in- 
scribing on  tablets  of  stone,  metal,  or  clay.  It  seems  to  me 
that  the  writer  of  Deuteronomy  i.  5  was  led  to  his  choice  of 
words  by  the  recollection  of  the  stone  tablets  of  the  Deca- 
logue, and  so  he  wrote  (rendering  the  passage  literally) : 
"  Moses  began  to  inscribe  this  law." 

In  the  famous  passage,  Isaiah  viii.  i,  the  prophet  is  told  by 
the  Lord  to  take  "a  large  tablet,  and  write  upon  it  with  a 
chisel  of  a  man."  The  tool  named  here  as  a  writing  imple- 
ment is  the  same  which  is  made  use  of  to  fashion  the  molten 
calf  (Exod.  xxxii.  4),  while  the  word  used  here  for  tablet 
appears  to  mean  a  piece  of  smooth,  polished  metal  The 
same  word  is  used  once  again  in  the  Old  Testament,  in  the 
song  about  women's  vanities,  in  Isaiah  iii.  23,  where  it  is 
supposed  to  mean  "  mirrors,"  which  were  made  of  metal. 

In  Job  xix.  24  reference  is  made  to  an  iron  stylus  to  be 
used  for  cutting  letters  in  the  rock.  This  passage  is  some- 
what compHcated  by  the  mention  of  lead  in  connexion  with 
the  iron  pen,  so  that  the  writer  speaks  of  the  characters  as 
"graven  in  the  rock  with  an  iron  stylus  and  lead."  In  Jere- 
miah xvii.  I  we  have  the  same  iron  stylus,  but  with  a  diamond 
point.  This  word  for  stylus  is  used  in  two  other  places  in  the 
Bible,  Psalm  xlv.  2  and  Jeremiah  viii.  8.  In  both  of  these 
places  it  is  ordinarily  rendered  "pen."  I  am  not  sure  that 
there  is  any  proper  ground  for  that  rendering.  Certainly  the 
root  means  to  "cut  into,"  and  the  word  primarily  indicates  a 
stylus,  not  a  pen. 

So  much  we  have  which  shows  us  the  practice  of  inscribing 
on  stone  and  metal  for  purposes  of  permanent  record  in  the 
earliest  periods  of  Hebrew  history  and  for  the  use  of  clay 
tablets  for  documentary  purposes.     If  we  turn  to  the  books  of 


HOW  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  WAS  WRITTEN     263 

Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel,  we  find  in  use  as  books  papyrus  and 
parchment  rolls,  written  in  ink  by  pens.  So  in  Jeremiah 
xxxvi.  18  we  read  that  Baruch  wrote  with  ink  in  a  book  at  the 
dictation  of  Jeremiah.  Jehudi  brings  this  book  to  the  King, 
who,  after  he  has  heard  three  or  four  columns  read,  cuts  it 
with  a  penknife  and  throws  it  into  the  fire  in  the  brasier, 
where  it  is  burned  up.  Evidently  it  was  written  on  something 
like  parchment  or  papyrus. 

Turning  to  Jeremiah's  contemporary  prophet,  Ezekiel,  we 
get  further  light  on  the  precise  form  of  the  books  of  that  day. 
Ezekiel  ii.  10  and  the  following  verses  tell  us  of  a  book-roll 
which  could  be  unrolled  from  its  staves  and  spread  out.  In 
Ezekiel  ix.  2  we  find  scribes  wearing  ink-horns  in  their  girdles. 
It  is  clear  that  at  the  time  of  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel  book- 
rolls,  such  as  are  used  in  Jewish  synagogues  to  this  day,  were 
in  familiar  use,  and  that  there  was  a  class  of  scribes  whose 
business  it  was  to  write  upon  parchment,  papyrus,  etc.,  and 
who  carried  ink-horns  in  their  girdles  as  the  utensils  and 
insignia  of  their  trade,  as  do  the  Oriental  scribes  of  the  present 
day.  All  the  paraphernalia  of  the  scribes'  art,  including  the 
penknife  (Jer.  xxxvi.  23),  were  then  in  existence. 

But  books  are  referred  to  in  passages  earlier  than  the  times 
of  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel.  Were  they  rolls,  written  on  papyrus 
or  parchment  ?  There  are  two  passages  which  would  seem  to 
suggest  a  different  meaning  for  the  word  "  book  "  in  the  earlier 
times.  One  of  these  passages  is  Isaiah  xxx.  8,  written  perhaps 
about  B.C.  702.  Here  tablet  and  book  are  put  together  as 
synonymous.  Isaiah  is  to  write  on  a  tablet,  and  on  a  book  he 
is  to  inscribe  it.  Following  the  Hebrew  use  the  same  thing  is 
said  twice.  The  Greek,  by  the  way,  renders  the  Hebrew  word 
meaning  tablet  by  "  tablet  of  boxwood,"  and  a  passage  in  one  of 
the  Apocryphal  books  (second  Esdras)  refers  to  tlie  same  use 
of  boxwood.  The  Greeks  used  boxwood  tablets  for  certain 
purposes,  as  the  Babylonians  used  clay  tablets.  Such  wooden 
writing  tablets  have  been  found  in  Pompeii.  They  may 
have  been  used  in  Palestine  also  in  the  Greek  period,  but  I 
think  it  extremely  unUkely  that  they  should  have  been  so  used 


264   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

in  the  time  of  Isaiah.  The  book  tablet  referred  to  in  Isaiah 
XXX.  8  was  presumably  a  tablet  of  clay,  like  the  book  tablets 
of  the  Assyrians. 

The  other  passage  of  a  still  earlier  date  is  Exodus  xxiv.  7. 
Here  also  the  context  seems  to  show  that  the  book  which 
Moses  read  was  on  tablets,  but  in  this  case  probably  of  stone. 
From  these  two  passages  it  appears  clear  that  in  the  earlier 
days,  until  the  time  of  Isaiah  certainly,  the  word  "book," 
as   used   by   the   writers   of    the   Old   Testament,    does   not 
necessarily  mean  a  roll  of  parchment  or  papyrus,   but  may 
mean  a  tablet,  or  several  tablets,  of  stone  or  clay.     A  "  book  " 
was,    in  fact,  anything  written.     So  in  the  Hebrew  use  the 
same  word  is  used  for  the  law  book  (Josh.  i.  8),  the  Scriptures 
(Dan.  ix.  2),  a  letter  (2  Kings  v.  5),  a  deed  of  sale  (Jer.  xxxii.  12), 
an  "indictment"  (Job  xxxi.  35),  and  a  "bill  of  divorcement" 
(Deut.  xxiv.  i).     All  these  things  were  equally  "books,"  just 
as  among  the  Assyrians  and  Babylonians.     Later  the  word 
came  to  be  restricted  to  what  we  know  as  books,  as  in  Joshua 
i.  8  and  Daniel  ix.  2.     It  is,  perhaps,  worth  noting  that  with 
Ahaz  the  kings  of  Judah,  and  in  the  time  of  Hezekiah  the 
whole  population  of  Judah,  began  to  come  into  very  close 
contact  with  Assyria.    Ahaz  copied  the  fashion  of  the  Assyrian 
altar,  and,  removing  the  ancient  altar,  put  this  new  Assyrian 
altar  in  its  place  (2  Kings  xvi.  10  ff.).    Proverbs  xxv.  i  suggests 
the  possibility  that  Hezekiah  copied  the  Assyrian  kings  in  a 
more  laudable  manner.     They  collected — and  especially  the 
kings   of  the   last,    Sargonid,    dynasty,    which   ascended   the 
Assyrian  throne  early  in  the  reign  of  Hezekiah — clay  books  in 
a  great  library  at  Nineveh.     Hezekiah  seems  to  have  under- 
taken something  of  the  same  sort  at  Jerusalem.     Were  the 
books  which  he  collected  in  the  form  of  clay  tablets  ?     I  think 
it  probable  that  they  were. 

But  in  the  century  following  Hezekiah  a  great  change 
took  place.  The  first  three-quarters  of  that  century,  the 
seventh  e.g.,  are  almost  a  blank.  We  know  certainly  of 
no  writings  of  that  period,  but  immediately  afterwards  occurs 
a  notable  religious  reform,  and  we  enter  upon  a  period  of 


HOW  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  WAS  WRITTEN     265 

great  religious  and  literary  activity,  about  which  we  are  more 
fully  informed  than  about  any  other  period  of  Hebrew  or 
Jewish  history.  One  thing,  however,  we  do  know  about  this 
blank  three-quarters  of  a  century,  namely,  that  it  was  a  period 
when  foreign  influences  were  dominant  in  Judah.  The  worship 
of  foreign  gods  was  freely  practised,  and  one  of  the  kings 
of  this  period,  Amon,  bore  the  name  of  an  Egyptian  god. 
Was  the  use  of  papyrus  or  of  skins  written  upon  with  ink 
introduced  at  this  time?  It  seems  to  me  at  least  not  im- 
probable. 

To  sum  up  our  rather  fragmentary  information  as  to  the 
material  on  which  the  Hebrews  wrote.  It  is  clear  from  the 
references  which  have  been  given  that  at  an  early  time  they 
were  in  the  habit  of  writing  records  of  one  sort  and  another, 
including  laws,  on  stone ;  that  at  the  time  of  Isaiah  they  used 
metal  in  the  same  manner ;  that  before  the  Hebrews  entered 
Palestine,  as  early  as  the  fourteenth  century  B.C.,  the  people 
of  the  country  made  use  of  clay  tablets  for  documentary 
purposes,  and  that  the  Hebrews  at  the  time  of  Jeremiah  made 
a  similar  use  of  clay  tablets ;  that  the  books  mentioned  in  the 
earlier  writings  of  the  Hebrews,  up  to  B.C.  700,  in  the  only 
two  passages  where  there  is  any  allusion  to  the  material  or 
shape  of  the  books,  appear  to  have  been  tablets,  and  that  the 
only  writing  implement  mentioned  is  a  stylus.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  find  that  while  clay  tablets  were  still  in  use  for  deeds 
and  records  in  the  beginning  of  the  sixth  century,  yet  at  that 
time  books  were  written  with  pen  and  ink  on  rolls.  From 
this  time  onward  this  was  the  regular  method  of  book-making. 
It  may  be  added  that  with  this  period,  when  pen  and  ink 
began  to  be  used,  a  great  literary  activity  developed  among 
the  Jews.  They  began  to  collect  and  preserve  everything  that 
had  been  written,  and  to  form  the  laws  and  histories  which 
had  come  down  to  them  into  continuous  books. 


266   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 


IL    IN  WHAT  LETTERS? 

The  earliest  writings  of  which  we  have  information  in  Pales- 
tine were  in  the  Babylonian  cuneiform  script.  The  letters 
from  the  Egyptian  governors  and  subject  kings  in  Palestine 
to  their  suzerain,  contained  on  the  clay  tablets  found  at 
Tel  el-Amarna,  as  also  the  letter  found  at  Tel  Hesy,  in  Pales- 
tine, were  written  in  the  Babylonian  cuneiform  characters,  and 
almost  all  were  in  the  Babylonian  tongue.  It  was  formerly 
supposed  that  the  Phoenician  alphabet  was  invented  somewhere 
between  b.c.  1500  and  2000,  but  the  discovery  of  these  letters 
written  from  Phoenician  cities — Sidon,  Tyre,  Byblus,  Beirut, 
etc. — to  the  Egyptian  kings  about  b.c.  1400,  not  in  the  com- 
paratively convenient  Phoenician  alphabet,  but  in  the  extremely 
cumbersome  Babylonian  cuneiform  script,  renders  it  probable 
that  the  Phoenician  alphabet  had  not  been  invented  at  that 
time. 

From  about  1400  to  the  middle  of  the  ninth  century  b.c. 
we  have  no  inscriptions  or  written  material  of  any  description 
from  Palestine  or  its  neighbourhood.  Then  we  begin  to 
meet  with  inscriptions,  in  diverse  places,  in  an  alphabetic 
script.  What  the  origin  of  that  alphabetic  script  was  and 
when  it  was  invented  are  as  yet  unknown.  Three  theories 
of  its  origin  prevail:  (i)  That  it  was  derived  from  Egypt,  the 
most  commonly  accepted  opinion  at  the  present  moment, 
although  I,  personally,  think  it  to  be  erroneous;  (2)  that  it 
"was  derived  from  the  Babylonian  cuneiform  script,  which 
seems  to  me  more  probable ;  (3)  that  it  was  derived  from  the 
Hittites.  Ancient  tradition  ascribes  the  invention  of  this 
alphabet  to  the  Phoenicians,  and  presumably  we  may  accept 
this  tradition  as  correct.  So  far  as  our  present  knowledge  goes, 
it  would  seem  that  it  must  have  been  perfected  later  than  the 
fourteenth  century  B.C.  and  earlier  than  the  ninth.  In  the 
fourteenth  century  we  find   the  Babylonian   script   and   the 


HOW  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  WAS  WRITTEN     267 

Babylonian  language  in  use;  in  the  ninth  the  Phoenician 
script  meets  us  in  a  completed  form,i  and  the  inscriptions 
are  in  the  various  vernacular. 

One  of  the  earliest  inscriptions  in  the  Phoenician  alphabet 
which  we  possess  is  the  famous  Moabite  stone — an  inscription 
of  King  Mesha  of  Moab  (2  Kings  iii.  4  ff.),  found  at  Dhiban, 
Dibon  of  the  Bible  (Num.  xxi.  30;  Isa.  xv.  2),  in  1868,  in 
which  Mesha  relates  how  he  threw  off  the  yoke  of  the  king  of 
Israel,  recovered  and  rebuilt  the  cities  which  had  been  taken 
or  destroyed  by  the  Israelites,  expelled  the  worship  of  Yahaweh, 
and  erected  altars  to  Chemosh  and  Ashtor  Chemosh,  and 
dedicated  to  them  the  spoils  and  altars  taken  from  Yahaweh. 
The  language  of  the  inscription  is  Moabite,  a  language  sub- 
stantially identical  with  Hebrew. 

To  about  the  same  period,  a  little  earlier  or  a  little  later, 
belongs  the  Baal  Lebanon  inscription,  on  eight  fragments  of 
bronze,  found  in  Cyprus.  These  fragments  were  part  of  the 
rim  of  a  bowl  which  had  been  consecrated  to  Baal  Lebanon 
by  a  servant  of  Hiram,  king  of  Sidon.  How  the  bowl  came 
to  Cyprus  we  do  not  surely  know,  but  Assyrian  inscriptions  of 
a  later  date  record  the  fact  that  at  least  one  Sidonian  king 
took  refuge  in  Cyprus  to  avoid  the  Assyrian  wrath.  The 
characters  on  this  bowl  are  similar  to  those  on  the  Moabite 
stone. 

Later  Phoenician  inscriptions  have  been  discovered  in  con- 
siderable numbers,  like  the  longer  Tabnith  and  Eshmunazar 
inscriptions  on  sarcophagi,  found  at  Sidon,  belonging  to  about 

1  The  recent  discovery  of  inscribed  clay  tablets  in  Crete  may  substitute 
a  new  theory  of  the  origin  of  the  alphabet  for  those  above  mentioned.  At 
present  all  we  know  is  that  about  B.C.  1400,  or  possibly  even  earlier,  two 
systems  of  writing  existed  in  Crete  ;  the  one,  apparently  the  earlier, 
belonging  chiefly  or  altogether  to  eastern  Crete,  was  mainly  hieroglyphic 
in  character,  and  may  have  been  suggested  by  the  Egyptian  hieroglyphics  ; 
the  other,  the  later  and  more  highly  developed  form,  was  entirely  linear, 
bearing  no  resemblance  to  the  Egyptian  hieroglyphics,  and  apparently  a 
native  development  or  invention.  Both  of  these  scripts  were  used  for 
inscribing  records  of  some  kind  on  clay  tablets,  as  well  as  for  the  briefer 
seal  inscriptions. 


268   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

the  fourth  century  e.g.,  and  other  shorter  inscriptions  of 
various  dates.  These  inscriptions  have  been  found  through- 
out the  whole  Phoenician  world,  including  also  the  world  of 
Carthage.  One  of  the  longest  inscriptions  from  the  Cartha- 
ginian dominions  is  the  tariff  of  temple  dues  found  at  Marseilles, 
and  belonging,  perhaps,  to  the  close  of  the  fifth  century  B.C. 
All  these  inscriptions,  from  the  fourth  century  onward,  are 
written  in  substantially  the  same  characters,  that  variety  of  the 
Phoenician  alphabet  which  we  call,  in  the  narrower  sense,  the 
Phoenician  script. 

From  the  Hebrews  themselves  we  have  the  Siloah  inscrip- 
tion, found  in  the  Siloah  tunnel  under  the  Ophel  hill  at 
Jerusalem,  and  now  in  the  Imperial  Museum  at  Constanti- 
nople. This  inscription  was  cut  in  the  side  of  the  tunnel  by 
the  workmen  at  the  completion  of  the  work.  The  characters 
on  it  are  practically  identical  with  those  on  the  Moabite  stone. 
The  date  of  the  inscription  is  still  uncertain.  It  is  generally 
supposed  to  belong  to  the  times  of  Ahaz  or  Hezekiah,  kings 
of  Judah,  at  the  close  of  the  eighth  century  B.C. ;  but  some 
scholars  would  ascribe  it  to  a  period  as  late  as  the  first 
century  B.C. 

Besides  the  Siloah  inscription  we  have  some  twenty  old 
Hebrew  seals,  and  a  number  of  pieces  of  inscribed  pottery 
found  recently  by  Dr.  Bliss.  The  dates  of  these  gems  and 
sherds  are  not  yet  well  established.  The  oldest  of  them  may 
belong  to  the  ninth  century  B.C.,  the  same  period  as  the 
Moabite  stone;  the  latest  of  them  may  probably  be  ascribed 
to  the  first  or  second  century  B.C.  They  show  a  form  of  the 
Phoenician  alphabet  midway  between  the  Phoenician  script  and 
the  script  of  the  Moabite  stone,  but  the  differences  between 
all  three  are  such  as  to  be  apparent  only  to  a  specialist.  This 
is  the  old  Hebrew  script. 

German  explorations  at  Zinjirli,  in  the  extreme  north  of 
Syria  on  the  boundary  of  Asia  Minor,  or  in  the  extreme  south 
of  Asia  Minor  on  the  boundaries  of  Syria,  according  as  one 
estimates  those  boundaries,  a  little  more  than  ten  years  ago, 
brought  to  light  Aramaean  inscriptions  of  the  eighth  century 


HOW  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  WAS  WRITTEN     269 

B.C.  The  earliest  of  these  is  on  a  basalt  statue  which 
Panammu  of  Jaidi  erected  to  his  god  Hadad.  From  about 
the  same  period  as  these  Aramaean  inscriptions  from  Zinjirli 
we  have  inscriptions  on  Assyrian  stone  weights  from  Nineveh, 
bilingual  clay  tablets  in  Aramaean  and  cuneiform  characters, 
and  Aramaean  inscribed  seals.  From  the  eighth  century  on- 
ward Aramaean  inscriptions  are  found  in  considerable  numbers. 
We  have  numerous  dockets  in  the  Aramaean  script  and  tongue 
on  the  edges  of  clay  tablets  of  all  dates  in  Assyria  and  Baby- 
lonia. Of  the  sixth  century  B.C.  we  have  a  stela  from  Tema, 
in  Arabia,  about  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles  south-east  of 
Edom.  In  the  following  century  we  find  Aramaean  inscrip- 
tions in  Egypt. 

The  earliest  Aramaean,  Phoenician,  and  Moabite  inscriptions 
are  all  strikingly  similar,  and  are  called  by  some  the  old 
Semitic  script.  By  the  sixth  century  B.C.  the  Aramaean  had 
developed  a  character  of  its  own,  readily  distinguished  by 
specialists.  By  the  fourth  century  the  classical  Phoenician 
script  had  developed  among  the  Phoenicians.  The  Hebrew 
gems  show  a  particular  form  for  certain  characters,  which 
specialists  call  the  old  Hebrew  script.  It  was  presumably  in 
this  last-mentioned  script  that  the  earliest  writings  of  the  Old 
Testament  were  written,  and  this  script  maintained  itself 
among  the  Jews  until  the  second  century  B.C.,  or  even  later. 
But  no  parts  of  the  Old  Testament  have  been  preserved 
among  the  Jews  in  that  script.  The  Samaritan  Pentateuch, 
however — that  is,  not  the  Pentateuch  written  in  the  Samaritan 
language,  but  the  Pentateuch  preserved  by  the  Samaritan 
Church,  which  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  our  Hebrew 
Pentateuch — is  preserved  in  a  form  of  this  Hebrew  writing. 

The  Samaritan  Church  grew  out  of  the  Jewish  Church 
about  B.C.  400.  We  are  told  (Nehemiah  xiii.  28)  that  a 
grandson  of  Eliashib  the  high  priest  had  married  the 
daughter  of  Sanballat,  the  leader  of  the  Samaritans.  When 
Nehemiah  called  upon  the  Jews  to  put  away  their  foreign 
wives,  Eliashib's  grandson  refused  to  do  so  and  was  expelled 
from   Jerusalem   with   his  wife.      He   took   refuge   with   his 


270  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

father-in-law,  Sanballat,  in  Samaria,  and  established  the 
Samaritan  Church.  He  took  with  him  a  copy  of  the 
Pentateuch,  which  became  the  Bible  of  the  Samaritan  Church. 
More  conservative  than  their  southern  neighbours,  the  Jews, 
the  Samaritans  never  added  to  this  Bible,  and  have  retained 
it  to  the  present  time,  not  only  in  its  original  language,  the 
Hebrew,  but  also  in  the  original  ancient  writing.  The 
Samaritan  script  deviates  from  the  ancient  Hebrew  only  in 
its  caligraphical  character,  that  is,  the  effort  was  made  to 
render  the  script  as  beautiful  as  possible.  It  is  an  ornate 
type  of  the  old  Hebrew  script. 

The  Samaritan  Pentateuch  is  thus  an  evidence  to  us  that 
at  the  close  of  the  fifth  century  B.C.  the  Jewish  Scriptures 
were  written  in  the  old  Hebrew  script.  The  Greek  trans- 
lation of  the  Scriptures  of  the  Old  Testament,  the  Septuagint, 
made  for  the  Greek-speaking  Jews  in  Alexandria,  from  the 
third  century  B.C.  onwards,  shows  us  that  at  that  period, 
also,  the  Jewish  Scriptures  were  written  in  the  old  Hebrew 
characters,  for  there  are  certain  errors  in  the  Septuagint  trans- 
lation, due  to  confusion  of  letters,  which  could  not  have 
occurred  had  the  script  from  which  the  translation  was  made 
been  the  square  character  in  which  the  Hebrew  Bibles  are 
written  to-day. 

Coins  struck  in  the  Maccab^ean  period,  circa  B.C.  150 
onward,  also  bear  inscriptions  in  the  old  Hebrew  characters, 
and  even  the  coins  of  the  revolt  of  the  Jews  under  Kokba, 
135  A.D.,  have  inscriptions  essentially  in  the  same  character. 
But,  as  we  shall  see  presently,  for  purposes  of  ordinary  writing, 
at  least,  the  old  Hebrew  was  probably  giving  way  to  the 
modern  square  script  at  the  close  of  the  Maccabaean 
period,  and  had  completely  yielded  to  the  square  script 
for  manuscript  purposes  long  before  the  time  of  Kokba. 
Matthew  v.  18  shows  us  that  at  the  time  of  Christ  the 
later  Jewish  square  script  was  fully  established  for  the  writing 
of  the  Law  and,  presumably,  also  for  the  Scriptures  in  general. 
The  passage  referred  to  reads :  "  Till  heaven  and  earth 
pass  away,  one  jot  or  one  tittle  shall  in  no  wise  pass  away 


HOW  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  WAS  WRITTEN     271 

from  the  law."  The  jot  is  the  letter  yod,  and  is  referred  to  as 
the  smallest  letter  of  the  Hebrew  alphabet.  That  is  true  in 
the  case  of  the  later  square  script,  but  in  the  old  Hebrew 
script  the  yod  is  one  of  the  larger  and  rather  more  compli- 
cated letters. 

The  later  square  script  was  developed  from  the  Aramsean 
writing.  Between  the  fourth  and  first  centuries  B.C.  we  find 
the  Aramaean  script  developing  in  the  direction  of  greater 
elegance  and  greater  distinctness.  Two  side  developments 
of  this  Aramaean  script,  which  have  come  down  to  us,  are  the 
Palmyrene,  used  in  Palmyra,  and  the  Nabataean,  found  in 
inscriptions  in  the  territory  of  Edom,  Moab,  and  Ammon, 
and  further  southward  and  south-eastward  in  Arabia,  in  the 
first  century  B.C.  and  the  first  century  a.d.  One  of  these 
Nabataean  inscriptions  found  in  Arabia  dates  from  the  ninth 
year  of  Harithat  ("lover  of  his  people"),  who  is  the  Aretas 
mentioned  in  2  Corinthians  xi.  32.  This  Nabataean  script 
is  a  very  elegant  and  beautiful  development  from  the  old 
Aramaean,  but  not  so  clear  and  legible  as  the  late  Hebrew 
square  script,  which  is,  on  the  whole,  the  best  script  for 
purposes  of  ordinary  use  derived  from  that  source. 

Specialists  think  that  they  find  the  first  traces  of  the  later 
square  script  over  a  rock-hewn  chamber  at  Arak  el-Emir,  in 
southern  Gilead,  east  of  the  Jordan.  Unfortunately,  this  in- 
scription consists  of  only  five  letters,  which  no  one  has  as  yet 
been  able  to  read  satisfactorily.  They  are  ascribed  to  the 
year  B.C.  176.  I  have  examined  these  letters  on  the  spot  and 
copied  them  and  photographed  them,  but  they  did  not  seem 
to  me  to  show  this  change  from  the  old  to  the  later  square 
script.  Moreover,  historical  •  notices  of  the  construction  of 
Arak  el-Emir  seem  to  me  to  render  it  probable  that  the 
inscription  belongs  to  the  end  rather  than  to  the  beginning 
of  the  second  century  B.C. 

The  first  inscription  in  actual  square  script  which  we  possess 
is  from  the  so-called  tomb  of  St.  James,  in  the  Kedron  Valley 
by  Jerusalem.  Here  there  is  no  mistaking  the  fact  that  we 
have  the  late  square  script  and  not  the  early  Hebrew  script. 


272    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

or  any  allied  form.  The  date  of  this  inscription  is  some  time 
in  the  first  century  B.C.  Somewhere  in  that  century,  it  seems 
to  me  the  evidence  shows  us,  the  change  was  made  in  copies 
of  the  Scriptures  from  the  old  Hebrew  script  to  the  modern 
square  script.  This  was,  presumably,  done  for  the  sake  of 
beauty  and  clearness,  both  of  which  the  square  script  possessed 
in  a  degree  far  exceeding  the  old  Hebrew  script.  The  motives 
of  the  change  were,  therefore,  the  same  which  induced  the 
Samaritans  to  beautify  the  old  Hebrew  script,  in  which  they 
have  continued  to  this  day  to  write  their  Bible.  The  old 
Hebrew  script  was  peculiarly  liable  to  error  in  this — that  a 
number  of  the  letters  so  closely  resembled  one  another  that 
it  was  not  always  possible  to  distinguish  them.  This  is  true 
in  all  the  older  varieties  of  the  Phoenician  alphabet — the 
Moabite  stone,  the  old  Phoenician  inscriptions,  the  old 
Aramaean  inscriptions,  and  the  old  Hebrew  inscriptions — and 
it  will  be  observed  that  diverse  transliterations  of  these  inscrip- 
tions are  always  presented  by  different  scholars  for  the  simple 
reason  that,  as  before  said,  certain  letters  are  indistinguishable 
one  from  another.  Some  mistakes  arising  from  this  similarity 
of  letters  in  the  old  Hebrew  script  appear  in  our  Bibles  to- 
day; that  is,  in  transhterating  from  the  old  Hebrew  to  the 
later  square  script  the  scribes,  owing  to  the  similarity  of 
certain  letters,  made  mistakes.  In  doubtful  or  difficult  passages 
errors  have,  in  not  a  few  cases,  been  corrected  by  scholars  by 
retransliterating  into  the  old  Hebrew,  when  it  becomes  plain 
to  the  eye  what  the  mistake  is  which  was  made  by  the  scribes. 
But  the  scribes  of  the  Old  Testament  did  not  stop  at  this 
point.  In  the  alphabet  of  the  later  square  script  there  is  the 
same  number  of  letters  as  in  the  older  alphabet,  namely, 
twenty-two.  There  are  no  vowels  in  this  alphabet,  but  only 
consonants.  Certain  letters,  the  smooth  and  rough  breathings 
and  y  and  w  were  capable  of  being  used  to  indicate  that  an  ^, 
an  /,  or  an  u  vowel  was  to  be  pronounced.  In  general,  how- 
ever, no  indication  of  the  vowel  to  be  pronounced  was  given 
in  the  text,  but  only  the  consonants  of  the  word  were  written. 
This  was,  of  necessity,  a  very  incomplete  mode  of  writing,  and 


HOW  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  WAS  WRITTEN     273 

gave  rise  to  many  errors.  One  can  judge,  in  part,  what  the 
difficulties  of  reading  accurately  a  script  written  in  this  manner 
were  if  one  will  take  a  passage  of  ordinary  English,  eliminate 
the  vowels,  and  then  try  to  read  it  by  the  consonants.  To  be 
sure,  the  English  and  the  Hebrew  languages  are  different  in 
character,  and  the  confusion  arising  in  English,  were  the 
vowels  to  be  omitted,  would  be  much  greater  than  the  confu- 
sion resulting  from  this  method  of  writing  in  the  Hebrew ;  but 
one  will  at  least  obtain  an  idea,  from  such  a  process,  of  the 
difficulty  of  accurate  reading  in  the  old  unpointed  texts.  In 
the  case  of  proper  names,  for  instance,  it  was  impossible  to 
determine  how  to  pronounce  them,  without  some  knowledge 
outside  of  the  mere  text. 

The  tradition  of  the  proper  pronunciation  of  the  Hebrew 
text,  and  its  correct  vocalisation,  was  maintained  orally  in  the 
schools ;  that  is  to  say,  the  consonant  text  was  supplemented 
by  an  oral  tradition ;  but  the  .more  remote  that  tradition 
became  from  the  date  of  the  original  text  the  more  liable 
it  became  to  error.  This  is  well  illustrated  in  the  case  of 
Greek  and  Latin.  Latin  was  preserved  as  the  Church  and 
school  language  throughout  the  middle  ages,  and  the  tradi- 
tion of  its  correct  pronunciation  passed  down  from  generation 
to  generation.  This  tradition  was  supplemented  by  an  alphabet 
much  more  developed  than  the  old  Hebrew,  possessing  vowels 
as  well  as  consonants,  and  yet  to-day  we  do  not  know  certainly 
how  to  pronounce  Latin.  It  is  a  matter  of  dispute  among 
scholars,  and  still  more  is  this  the  case  with  Greek.  Among 
the  Hebrews  there  are  to-day  two  very  distinct  pronunciations 
— that  of  the  Sephardim^  or  Spanish  Jews,  and  that  of  the 
Ashkenazim^  or  Polish  Jews,  and  yet  the  differences  of  pro- 
nunciation between  these  two  have  grown  up  since  vowel 
points  were  introduced  in  the  Hebrew  text.  Even  with  those 
helps  to  a  correct  pronunciation,  it  has  been  impossible  to 
maintain  a  fixed  standard ;  much  more  was  this  the  case  before 
those  helps  were  introduced. 

The  Greeks  early  felt  the  need  of  vowels  in  the  alphabet, 
which  they  had  adopted  from  the  Phoenicians,  and  the  earliest 


274   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Greek  inscriptions  which  have  come  down  to  us  show  that  they 
had  already  then  added  or  developed  vowels.  It  was  Greek 
influence  which  finally  led  to  the  development  of  an  apology 
for  vowels,  a  system  of  points,  among  the  Syrians.  It  was  in 
the  schools  of  Edessa  that  this  system  of  pointing,  as  it  was 
called,  was  introduced.  First,  diacritical  signs  were  used  to 
distinguish  certain  letters,  indicating  whether  a  letter  was  to  be 
pronounced  single  or  double,  soft  or  hard  (in  the  case  of 
mutes),  as  vowel  or  consonant  (in  the  case  of  semi-vowels),  etc. 
Then  this  gave  place  to  a  system  of  vowel  points,  that  is, 
points  placed  by  a  letter  above  or  below,  to  indicate  the  vowel 
to  be  pronounced  after  that  letter,  or  that  no  vowel  at  all  was 
to  be  pronounced.  This  system  reached  its  full  development 
among  the  Hebrews  not  earlier  than  the  seventh  century 
probably,  in  Babylonia,  and  the  eighth  century  in  Palestine. 
More  closely  we  cannot  date  it.  We  know  that  about  600  a.d. 
such  points  were  not  used  in  Hebrew  Bible  manuscripts,  and 
that  about  900  a.d.  systems  of  pointing  were  fully  developed. 
The  earliest  pointed  manuscript  which  has  come  down  to  us 
is  the  St.  Petersburg  codex  of  the  prophets,  dated  916  a.d.; 
but  the  pointing  in  this  is  quite  different  from  the  system 
which  ultimately  prevailed  among  the  Jews  everywhere,  and 
which  is  commonly  called  the  Palestinian  system.  The  earliest 
manuscripts  having  the  latter  system  of  pointing  which  we 
now  possess  are  probably  not  earlier  than  the  eleventh  century 
A.D. ;  but  we  have  information  of  the  existence  of  such  pointed 
manuscripts  as  early  as  the  middle  of  the  preceding  century. 
By  that  date,  that  is,  the  tenth  century  a.d.,  the  Hebrew 
script  had  definitely  assumed  the  form  with  which  we  are 
familiar  in  our  printed  Hebrew  Bibles,  written,  as  to  the  con- 
sonants, in  a  square  character,  the  vocalisation  indicated  by 
certain  marks  above  and  below  the  line,  and  certain  points 
indicating  whether  letters  are  to  be  doubled  or  not,  whether 
mutes  are  hard  or  soft,  etc.  Of  course,  errors  were  made  in 
this  pointing  or  vocalisation  of  the  text,  most  of  them  of  little 
importance,  a  few  materially  changing  the  sense.  Many  of 
these  latter  can  be  corrected  by  a  critical  process,  and  often 


HOW  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  WAS  WRITTEN     275 

by  comparison  of  the  Greek  translation  made  while  the  old 
script  was  in  use  and  before  any  system  of  pointing  had  been 
introduced. 

To  sum  up,  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  were  written  originally 
in  the  old  Hebrew  script,  a  special  Hebrew  development  of 
the  Phoenician  alphabet.  Somewhere,  probably  in  the  first 
century  e.g.,  they  were  transliterated  out  of  these  early 
characters  into  the  later  square  characters — a  script  of  a  very 
different  description.  Originally,  the  Scriptures  were  written 
in  consonants  only,  and  without  division  of  words.  Several 
centuries  after  Christ  points  of  various  descriptions  began 
to  be  introduced  to  assist  the  readers  in  a  correct  reading 
of  the  text.  These  points  at  first  were  simply  diacritical. 
Then  they  were  developed  so  as  to  indicate,  in  a  rough  way 
(for,  at  the  best,  the  Hebrew  system  of  vowel  punctuation 
is  an  extremely  rough  one,  indicating  a  very  small  range  of 
vowel  sounds  actually  used),  the  vowels  to  be  pronounced 
after  the  respective  consonants.  Gradually  also  words  were 
separated.  At  least  two  complete  systems  of  pointing  were 
developed  among  the  Hebrews.  One  of  these  systems  we 
find  in  use  in  a  manuscript  of  the  ninth  century.  The  other, 
which  ultimately  prevailed,  was  in  use  at  the  same  time,  but 
has  not  come  down  to  us  in  any  manuscript  earlier  than 
the  eleventh  century  a.d.  From  that  century  dates  our  first 
complete  manuscript  of  the  Old  Testament. 


CHAPTER   XIII 
STONE   WORSHIP 

A  FORM  of  worship  not  uncommon  among  primitive 
peoples  is  the  worship  of  stones.  This  worship  of 
stones  was  peculiarly  characteristic  of  the  religion  of  the 
heathen  Arabians  before  the  time  of  Mohammed.  At  every 
sanctuary  one  or  more  stones  were  set  up.  Generally  these 
stones  were  unworked,  like  the  caaba  at  Mecca.  Sometimes 
they  were  rudely  hewn.  By  preference  they  were  oblong 
or  cone-shaped.  These  stones  served  a  double  purpose. 
They  represented  the  god  of  the  sanctuary,  and  at  the  same 
time  they  served  as  altars.  The  stone  was  not  regarded  as 
an  image  of  the  god,  but  the  god  was  supposed  to  have 
his  regular  dwelling  in  the  stone,  or  to  be  in  some  way  con- 
nected with  it,  so  that  through  the  stone  one  might  come 
into  peculiar  relation  with  the  god.  Sacrifice  consisted  in 
pouring  the  blood  of  the  creature  killed  upon  this  stone, 
or  smearing  the  stone  with  blood  and  pouring  out  the 
rest  of  the  blood  in  a  hole  at  the  bottom  of  the  stone. 
Then  the  sacrificer  and  his  friends  ate  the  flesh  of  the  creature 
offered.  The  blood  had  been  given  to  God  through  the  stone, 
and  the  people  ate  the  flesh.  In  case  of  a  covenant  or  treaty, 
seven  stones  were  sometimes  set  up.  The  hands  of  the  con- 
tracting parties  were  cut  with  a  sharp  stone,  the  blood  from 
their  hands  was  put  upon  the  stones  that  had  been  set  up,  and 
the  god  was  invoked  to  witness  the  treaty  or  contract  between 
the  parties. 

These  sacred  stones,  used   for   purposes  of  worship,  were 
called  among  the  Arabs  manzah^  and  an  individual  stone  was 

276 


STONE  WORSHIP  277 

called  nuzub,  the  former  being  the  collective  of  the  latter. 
East  of  the  Jordan  and  in  the  Jordan  valley  not  a  few  evidences 
of  this  stone  worship  have  been  found,  and  occasionally  a 
gilgal^  or  rude  circle  of  stones.  Some  remains  of  this  particular 
form  of  stone  worship  have  been  found  also  west  of  the  Jordan 
valley,  in  Palestine  proper.  Such  was  the  group  of  stones 
over  or  about  which  a  temple  was  built  at  Tel  es-Safi,  supposed 
to  be  the  ancient  Gath,  excavated  by,  Dr.  Bliss  for  the  Palestine 
Exploration  Fund.  Here,  in  a  temple,  and  partly  embedded 
in  its  walls,  were  found  some  six  conical  stones,  an  ancient 
gilgaly  a  shrine  of  the  primitive  inhabitants.  One  is  tempted 
to  think  that  there  may  have  been  originally  seven  stones 
instead  of  six,  as  we  find  to  have  been  the  case  at  times  with 
the  Arabs,  and  as  was  apparently  the  case  at  the  well  of  Beer- 
sheba,  so  sacred  in  the  earlier  Hebrew  times.  This  rude 
shrine  at  Gath  was,  like  the  primitive  Arabian  shrines,  a  few 
sacred  stones  under  the  open  heaven  not  covered  by  any 
building.  At  a  later  date,  it  would  seem,  a  temple  took  the 
place  of  the  earlier  rude  open-air  shrine  or  sanctuary,  and 
some  of  the  stones  of  the  gilgal  were  built  into  the  walls 
of  the  temple.  We  find  a  somewhat  similar  method  employed 
in  the  case  of  at  least  one  Babylonian  temple,  where  a  sacred 
stone,  or  baitylion  was  built  into  the  temple  wall.  Such  stones 
represented  a  ruder  and  more  primitive  type  of  worship.  This 
ruder  type  of  stone  worship  had,  in  general,  given  way  in 
Babylonia  at  a  very  early  date  to  a  more  ornate  religion,  with 
images  of  gods  and  goddesses  and  highly  decorated  shrines. 
Yet  the  sanctity  of  the  ancient  stones  was  such  that  here  and 
there  they  survived,  inclosed  within  walls,  or  even  embedded 
in  the  wall,  but  too  ancient  and  too  sacred  to  be  entirely  done 
away  with.  One  is  reminded  of  the  persistence  of  the  ancient 
stone  worship  among  the  Mohammedan  Arabians  in  the 
supreme  sanctity  of  the  caaba  at  Mecca.  Mohammed  either 
did  not  feel  himself  strong  enough  to  aboHsh  the  worship 
of  this  stone,  or  else  he  was  himself  in  regard  to  it  under  the 
spell  of  ancestral  custom,  so  that  while  he  did  away  with  other 
idolatrous  practices  of  the  same  sort,  he  yet  preserved  the 


278   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

caaba^  and  allowed  it  to  remain  as  the  central  sanctuary  and 
most  sacred  object  of  Islam. 

The  Bible  shows  us  that  in  the  earlier  times  stone  pillars, 
stone  circles,  etc.,  used  in  connexion  with  the  worship  and 
religious  rites,  both  of  Canaanites  and  Israelites,  were  common 
all  over  the  land.  Taking  up  the  Book  of  Joshua,  we  find  that 
the  first  headquarters  established  by  the  Israelites  west  of  the 
Jordan  were  at  a  place  called  Gilgal^  that  is,  a  circle  of  stones. 
According  to  the  account  in  Joshua  iv.,  this  circle  was  erected 
by  the  Israelites  themselves,  who  took  twelve  stones  out  of  the 
Jordan  and  set  them  up  there ;  and  in  chapter  v.  we  have  an 
interpretation  of  the  name  gilgal  (circle)  given  as  the  rolling 
away  of  the  reproach  of  the  Egyptians  from  off  the  Israelites 
by  the  circumcision  at  that  place.  The  prophets  tell  us  that 
this  gilgal,  or  circle  of  stones,  was  in  their  day  regarded  as 
a  sanctuary  of  peculiar  holiness,  to  which  people  made 
pUgrimages.  But  this  was  not  the  only  gilgal  west  of  Jordan. 
There  is  at  least  one  other  place  of  this  name  mentioned  in 
the  Old  Testament,  and  probably  two.  One  of  these  gilgals 
was  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Bethel,  in  the  mountains  of 
central  Israel,  where  we  find  a  place  called  Gilgiliya  existing 
to-day.  Another,  mentioned  in  Joshua  xii.  23,  as  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  Dor,  is  called  to-day  Gilgulie.  Besides 
these  two  gilgals  on  the  west  side  of  Jordan,  the  Bible  mentions 
a  gilgal,  called  also  a  mazzebah,  or  collection  of  stones,  in 
Gilead.  This  gilgal,  or  viazzebah,  was  erected,  according  to 
Genesis  xxxi.  45-54,  by  Jacob.  He  sacrificed  at  it,  and  made 
there  a  covenant  with  Laban.  It  will  be  seen  that  this  was 
.  precisely  the  same  sort  of  thing  which  the  ancient  Arabs  made 
use  of  in  connexion  with  their  covenants,  as  described  above, 
and  the  word  viazzebah,  which  we  find  here  and  frequently 
in  the  Old  Testament,  is  the  same  word  as  the  Arabic  manzab, 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  was  used  as  the  name  for  these  stones. 
Not  only  that ;  the  Bible  also  tells  us  that  in  the  earlier  days 
the  Hebrews  did  actually  sacrifice  at  such  stones,  pouring  the 
blood  upon  them  or  at  their  feet  in  precisely  the  same  way  as 
the  Arabs  did. 


STONE  WORSHIP  279 

It  must  be  said,  first  of  all,  that  among  the  Arabs  any 
killing  of  animals  for  food  was  sacrifice.  The  blood  must  be 
given  to  God,  after  which  the  flesh  might  be  eaten  by  the 
worshippers.  To-day,  among  the  Moslem  Arabs,  the  word 
for  killing  an  animal  is  zehach^  sacrifice.  Even  when  a  gazelle 
is  shot  it  may  not  be  eaten  until  the  blood  has  first  been  care- 
fully poured  out — a  survival  of  the  old  custom  'of  giving  the 
blood  to  God,  the  flesh  alone  belonging  to  the  worshippers. 
The  same  word  zebach  was  used  by  the  Hebrews  to  denote 
killing,  or  sacrifice,  and  in  Leviticus  xvii.,  for  example,  we  find 
it  specially  provided  that  the  blood  of  any  animal  which  is 
slain  must  be  given  to  God  before  the  animal  may  be  eaten, 
while  in  the  case  of  wild  animals  killed  far  from  the  altar  the 
blood  must  be  poured  out  and  covered  with  earth,  very  much 
as  among  the  Arabs. 

In  I  Samuel  xiv.  32-35  we  have  the  account  of  something 
which  might  have  taken  place,  except  for  the  name  of  God 
there  used,  among  any  tribe  of  Arabians  before  the  time  of 
Mohammed.  The  people,  an  hungered  after  their  victory 
over  the  Philistines,  commenced  to  slay  and  eat.  Saul  was 
horrified  because  they  were  killing  and  eating  without  recog- 
nition of  God.  That  was  sacrilege,  an  invasion  of  the  Divine 
prerogative.  Accordingly  he  set  up  a  stone,  and  made  them 
kill  the  animals  at  the  stone,  pouring  out  their  blood  on  or  by 
it,  and  of  this  stone  it  is  said :  "  It  was  the  first  altar  that 
he  built  unto  Yahaweh."  Here  we  have  an  example  of 
sacrificing  at  a  rude  stone,  after  the  same  fashion  as  the  Arabs 
used.  When  the  Hebrews  entered  Canaan  they  were  already 
familiar  with  this  use  of  sacred  stones  in  connexion  with 
worship,  and  on  the  other  hand  they  found  the  people  every- 
where through  the  land  of  Canaan  making  use  of  stones  to 
indicate  the  presence  of  the  god.  No  shrine  was  complete 
unless  by  it  there  stood  a  stone.  This  practice,  we  learn 
from  the  Bible,  the  Israelites  were  not  slow  to  adopt,  and 
indeed,  as  already  said,  it  was  something  with  which  they 
were  famihar  from  the  time  of  their  wandering  ancestors. 
When  at  Bethel  (Gen.  xxxi.)  there  was  vouchsafed  to  Jacob  a 


28o   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

vision  of  the  angels  of  God  ascending  and  descending  upon  a 
ladder  (as  our  ordinary  translation  gives  it,  perhaps  rather 
a  terrace  tower,  like  the  Babylonian  ziggurats),  he  set  up 
there  a  stone  and  anointed  it  with  oil.  Oil  and  fat,  be  it 
said,  came  to  take  the  place  for  anointing  or  pouring  upon 
these  stones  which  was  taken,  among  the  Arabs,  by  blood. 
The  very  name,  Bethel,  is  suggestive  of  a  sacred  stone,  or  a 
baitylion,  and  the  later  narrative  of  the  Bible  shows  us  a  very 
sacred  shrine,  with  a  sacred  stone,  or  stones,  existing  at  that 
place.  Other  especially  sacred  stones  are  described  in  the 
Bible  as  existing  at  Shechem,  Mizpah,  Gibeon,  and  Enrogel. 

We  find  in  the  Bible,  especially  in  the  Prophets,  constant 
mention  of  the  pillars  which  were  set  up  by  the  altars  at  which 
the  Canaanites  and  Israelites  sacrificed  throughout  the  land. 
Now  the  word  "  pillar  "  in  our  English  Bible  is  the  translation 
of  the  Hebrew  mazzebah.  This,  as  we  have  seen,  was  the 
sacred  stone  which,  in  the  most  primitive  times,  was  the 
representative  of  God,  and  as  such  received  the  blood  of 
the  sacrifice.  But  at  a  later  time  we  find  prophets  denouncing 
these  pillars  and  demanding  their  destruction,  and  finally,  in 
the  time  of  Josiah,  when  the  high  places  all  over  the  country 
are  done  away  with,  these  stones  also  are  destroyed.  But 
long  before  the  days  of  the  prophets,  even  among  the 
Canaanites,  the  mazzebah  had  ceased  to  play  the  role  which 
it  played  among  the  Arabs,  as  both  the  representative  of  God 
and  also,  in  a  sense,  the  altar  on  which  the  blood  was  poured. 
At  the  Canaanite  and  Israelite  high  places  there  was,  in  addi- 
tion to  the  mazzebah^  an  altar.  Sacrifice  no  longer  consisted 
in  merely  pouring  out  the  blood  on  the  stone  which  stood  for 
God,  and  eating  the  flesh.  Fire  had  come  to  be  used  in  the 
sacrifice,  and  a  part  of  the  flesh  belonged  to  the  Deity  or  His 
representatives,  in  addition  to  the  blood.  Nevertheless,  the 
stones  or  pillars  continued  to  be,  in  a  sense,  the  representa- 
tives of  the  Deity,  and  at  the  sacrifice  blood  was  always 
smeared  upon  them. 

Now  it  is  not  surprising  to  find  that,  in  the  course  of  their 
religious  development,  the  Israelites  adopted  a  certain  number 


STONE   WORSHIP  281 

of  heathen  forms  and  symbols,  some  of  which,  in  the  process 
of  the  spirituaHsation  of  religion,  they  afterwards  discarded. 
Sometimes  such  forms  dropped  out  almost  unnoticed ;  some- 
times there  was  a  fierce  struggle.  So  it  has  been  in  the  later 
history  of  the  development  of  the  Christian  religion.  We 
find  in  the  story  of  the  conversion  of  the  heathen  to  Christianity 
much  strange  commingling  of  heathen  feasts,  and  rites,  and 
beliefs  with  Christian.  Sometimes  these  heathen  uses  were 
sloughed  off  as  Christianity  matured.  Sometimes  they  formed 
the  centre  of  struggle,  and  gave  rise  to  cruel  wars  and  bloody 
persecutions.  In  particular  locahties,  among  Christians,  a 
sacred  stone  has  assumed  a  place  of  supreme  importance  as 
the  representation  of  God  or  the  power  of  God,  precisely  as 
the  ancient  black  stone  of  Mecca,  the  caaba^  became  such 
a  sacred  representation  to  Islam.  In  pre-Reformation  times 
there  was  such  a  stone  at  Dresden,  enshrined  in  a  church,  and 
receiving  the  worship  and  adoration  of  numerous  Christian 
pilgrims  in  that  so-called  Christian  land.  At  the  Reforma- 
tion this  black  stone  of  Dresden,  with  many  other  heathen 
survivals  of  the  same  description,  was  abolished.  In  Hebrew 
history  we  find,  at  the  time  of  Josiah,  a  reformation  strikingly 
similar  to  our  own  Reformation  of  the  sixteenth  century ;  and 
to  carry  the  parallel  further,  in  the  reign  of  Hezekiah,  some 
seventy-five  years  earlier,  began  an  intellectual  and  religious 
awakening,  preparing  the  way  for  Josiah's  movement,  similar 
to  the  Renaissance  of  the  fifteenth  century,  which,  in  the 
history  of  Europe,  prepared  the  way  for  the  Reformation  of 
the  sixteenth  century. 

A  little  before  the  time  of  Hezekiah,  in  the  time  of  Amos, 
we  find  Gilgal  and  Beersheba,  both  of  them  places  where 
sacred  stones  had  been  set  up,  referred  to  as  shrines  held 
in  high  honour  by  the  people ;  and  Amos  and  the  prophets 
who  followed  him  testify  that  sacred  stones  stood  at  all  the 
altars  where  Yahaweh  was  worshipped  throughout  the  country. 
Indeed,  when  Isaiah  wishes  to  speak  of  the  glorious  days  to 
come,  when  the  worship  of  the  Lord  shall  extend  beyond  the 
bounds  of  Israel,  so  that  a  place  of  worship  to  Him  shall  be 


282    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

found  in  Egypt  also,  he  speaks  of  setting  up  a  pillar,  or 
?nazzedah,  there.  "In  that  day  shall  there  be  an  altar  to 
Yahaweh  in  the  midst  of  the  land  of  Egypt,  and  a  mazzebah 
at  the  border  thereof  to  Yahaweh"  (Isa.  xix.  19).  He  cannot 
think  of  the  worship  of  Yahaweh  without  the  accompaniment 
of  the  sacred  stone  or  pillar. 

With  King  Josiah  comes  the  recognition  by  the  religious 
leaders  of  the  people  that  such  things  are  gross  and  material, 
and  hindrances  to  the  true  spiritual  worship  of  God.  Prophets 
denounce  them,  and  reformers  break  them  in  pieces.  One 
might  show  how  this  spiritualising  process  goes  on,  still  further 
helped  by  the  Exile,  so  that  finally  not  only  pillars  and  other 
similar  representations  of  God  disappear,  but  even  the  sacred 
Ark  and  the  Uri7n  and  Thummim^  the  lots  which  the  priests 
used  to  cast,  in  the  days  of  Saul  and  David,  before  the  ephod 
or  before  the  Ark,  to  determine  the  will  of  God. 

With  Christ  we  come  to  a  still  more  advanced  spirituality, 
where  the  Temple  itself  is  robbed  of  its  sanctity,  the  veil  is 
rent  in  twain,  and  the  spiritual  indwelling  of  God  in  man 
takes  the  place  of  the  material  Temple,  with  its  dark  Holy 
of  Holies,  the  representation  of  the  abiding-place  of  God 
among  men.  It  is  a  slow  process  of  education,  from  the  rude 
stones,  such  as  stood  on  the  hill  at  es-Safi,  where  a  primitive 
people  worshipped  its  God,  up  through  the  Philistine  or 
Canaanite  temple,  with  its  altar  and  its  pillars  sacred  to  the 
Baal,  or  master  of  the  land ;  through  the  Israelite  adoption 
of  this  shrine  as  its  place  of  worship  and  the  identification 
of  its  Lord,  Yahaweh,  with  the  Baal,  or  master  of  that  region, 
and  its  use  in  His  worship  of  many  of  the  terms  and  practices 
with  which  the  Canaanite  Baal  had  been  worshipped  there; 
on  through  the  period  of  reformation,  when  such  shrines, 
with  their  altars  and  their  pillars,  were  destroyed,  and  their 
priests  gathered  together,  so  far  as  might  be,  at  Jerusalem, 
to  worship  Yahaweh  there  in  the  one  great  Temple,  where 
His  presence  was  represented  in  the  dark  Holy  of  Holies 
by  the  Ark,  and  by  the  cherubim ;  on  through  the  destruction 
of  that  Temple  and  the  disappearance  of  Ark  and  cherubim ; 


STONE  WORSHIP  283 

through  the  exile  in  Babylonia,  where  the  people  were  com- 
pelled to  worship  God  without  outward  symbol  or  indication 
of  His  presence,  and  even  without  sacrifice ;  on,  once  more, 
through  the  period  of  the  new  Temple,  where  God  was 
worshipped  again  with  the  sacrifice  of  bulls  and  oxen,  and 
where  the  place  of  His  special  presence  was  indicated  by 
a  dark  inner  chamber,  but  without  Ark  or  cherubim;  up  to 
the  culmination  of  this  development  from  materialism  into 
spiritualism,  when  the  veil  was  rent  in  twain,  and  God  declared 
to  reside  in  no  temple  made  by  hands,  neither  in  Jerusalem, 
nor  yet  in  Samaria,  and  the  sacrifice  of  bulls,  and  goats,  and 
sheep,  and  doves  was  done  away  with  for  ever,  spiritual  sacrifice 
and  spiritual  service  being  substituted  therefor. 


286  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

shipped  God  at  the  holy  place  where  Moses'  father-in-law 
was  priest.  In  point  of  fact,  the  religious  ideas  of  the 
Hebrews,  before  the  time  of  Moses,  were  substantially  the 
same  as  those  of  the  Arabians  before  the  time  of  Mohammed, 
as  is  shown  by  a  comparison  of  the  Bible  references  to  ancient 
Hebrew  customs  and  practices  with  the  customs  and  practices 
of  the  pre-Mohammedan  Arabians. 

But  with  all  this  I  am  not  concerned  at  present,  except 
only  to  say  that  the  Bible  constantly  indicates  the  methods 
of  God  to  be  of  this  nature :  He  teaches  man  through  that 
which  man  has  learned  from  his  own  experience  and  the 
experience  of  those  who  went  before  him ;  teaches  him  in 
the  beginning  through  forms  and  methods  which  seem  to  us 
of  a  later  age  strange  and  barbarous,  because  we  have 
advanced  so  far;  teaches  him  through  things  which  shall 
afterwards  be  laid  aside  when  they  have  served  their  purpose. 
And  so  the  revelation  through  Moses  is  not  an  entirely  new 
thing,  any  more  than  the  revelation  through  Christ.  It 
attaches  itself  to  what  had  gone  before,  but  puts  into  it  a 
new  spirit  and  a  new  life.  Many  of  the  forms  and  practices 
of  the  religion  of  Moses'  time  were  destined  to  drop  away 
at  a  later  date,  just  as  in  the  case  of  Christianity  it  was  found 
necessary,  in  course  of  time,  to  drop  the  Jewish  rites  and 
ceremonies  which  were  at  first  made  use  of  in  the  Christian 
Church. 

This  story  of  Moses,  as  we  find  it  in  the  Bible,  shows  us 
a  certain  connexion  with  Egypt,  but  not  necessarily  an 
intimate  acquaintance  with  Egyptian  religion  or  with  Egyptian 
civilisation.  The  Hebrews,  according  to  the  Old  Testament 
"account,  lived  in  Egypt,  separate  from  the  Egyptians,  main- 
taining their  own  customs  and  rites,  and  rejecting  everything 
Egyptian.  In  the  later  civilisation  of  Israel  we  find  nothing 
that  can  be  referred  to  Egypt.  Outside  of  the  deliverance 
from  Egyptian  bondage,  the  remembrance  of  which  played 
a  great  part  in  the  making  of  the  people  of  Israel,  there  is 
nothing  in  their  culture  which  attaches  itself  to  Egypt  until 
long  after  the  Babylonian  exile.     For  a  long  time,  therefore, 


THE  ARK  287 

it  seemed  to  me  improbable  that  Moses  or  the  IsraeHtes  had 
derived  anything  of  their  rehgion  from  Egypt.  But  there  is 
one  thing,  and  that  of  the  first  importance,  which  I  have  at 
last  been  forced  to  conclude  may  be,  and  seemingly  must 
be,  connected  with  the  influence  of  Egyptian  religion  upon 
Moses. 

I  have  already  said  that  the  gods  of  the  Arabians  were 
localised,  and  a  study  of  Hebrew  literature  shows  that  this 
ancient  idea  of  the  god  as  inhabiting  a  locality  was  strong  in 
Israel  also.  So  when  Elijah  would  seek  the  presence  of 
Yahaweh,  the  God  of  Israel,  he  travels  to  Horeb  (i  Kings 
xix.  8).  Deborah  sings  (Judges  v.  4)  that  Yahaweh's  habitation 
is  in  Seir,  which  is  the  same  as  Horeb,  and  that  He  comes 
thence  to  lead  the  armies  of  Israel  to  victory  against  their 
heathen  foes.  So  also  Habakkuk  (iii.  3)  sings  that  Yahaweh's 
dwelling  is  in  Paran  or  Teman,  which  is  again  the  same  place 
as  Seir  or  Horeb. 

Now  it  was  necessary  that  the  Israelites  should  advance 
beyond  this  stage  of  localising  God  in  Horeb,  or  else, 
entering  Palestine,  they  would  gradually  cease  to  be  wor- 
shippers of  God — Yahaweh,  Whose  dwelling  was  at  Sinai 
or  at  Horeb — and  would  become  worshippers  of  the  gods 
of  the  land  into  which  they  had  entered.  However  much 
they  might  think  of  Horeb  or  Sinai  as  the  original  home 
of  their  God,  in  some  form  He  must  go  with  them  into 
Palestine.  In  the  new  religion  given  by  Moses  this 
continuing  presence  of  Yahaweh  was  provided  for  through 
the  Ark. 

The  Ark  is  unhke  anything  which  we  find  among  the 
Arabians,  and  indeed  there  are  only  two  analogies  which  seem 
fairly  available  for  comparison.  In  Egypt  representations  of 
the  gods  were  carried  about  in  ships.  Originally  capable  of 
navigating  the  Nile  and  its  canals,  these  ships  were  finally 
so  reduced  in  size  that  they  could  be  carried  on  the  shoulders 
of  men.  In  the  cabin  or  box  occupying  the  central  part  of 
the  ship  was  some  representation  of  the  Deity,  but  precisely 
what  in  any  given  case  we  do  not  know,  as  the  cabin  or 


288   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

box  was  kept  carefully  covered  up  and  its  contents  concealed 
from  view. 

In  Babylonia  there  were  god-ships  of  a  similar  character. 
These  also  seem  to  have  been  carried  on  the  shoulders  of 
men,  but  we  have  no  representations  of  them.  At  a  later  date 
the  ship  developed  into  a  box,  carried  by  poles  passed  through 
rings  on  the  sides.  On  the  Assyrian  bas-reliefs  these  boxes 
are  represented  as  without  covers,  and  small  figures  of  the 
gods  stand  in  them  looking  out  over  the  sides.  It  is  possible 
that  this  is  a  mere  artistic  convention  to  show  what  were  the 
contents  of  the  box,  and  that  in  reality  the  box  was  covered 
and  the  images  of  the  gods  invisible.  But  at  least  it  shows 
that  the  Assyrian  did  not  exercise  that  extreme  care  to  prevent 
the  interior  from  being  seen  which  we  find  in  the  case  of  the 
Egyptian  god- ships.  Finally  we  find  a  litter  substituted  for  the 
box,  and  the  god  seated  upon  a  throne  on  this  litter,  which  is 
carried  by  poles  on  the  shoulders  of  men. 

Was  the  Hebrew  Ark  suggested  by  the  ships  or  boxes  used 
in  Egypt  or  in  Babylonia  to  carry  the  gods  in  procession  ?  It 
seems  to  me  that  such  was  the  case,  and  until  recently  I  had 
supposed  that  the  suggestion  came  from  Babylonia;  that  the 
Ark  was  a  tradition  from  the  ancient  times  when  the  ancestors 
of  the  Hebrews  were  in  close  connexion  with  Babylonia.  But 
the  difficulties  connected  with  this  view  are  very  great,  and 
I  am  now  inclined  to  suggest  that  the  idea  came  from  Egypt, 
and  that  in  the  Ark  we  have  an  evidence  of  information  pos- 
sessed by  Moses  with  regard  at  least  to  certain  of  the  salient 
features  of  Egyptian  religious  practices. 

The  name  Moses  is  of  doubtful  origin.  No  altogether 
satisfactory  etymology  of  it  has  been  given.  Sayce  supposed 
that  he  had  found  the  word  in  Assyrian.  Some  of  the  best 
scholars  to-day  consider  it  Egyptian,  and  compare  with  it  such 
Egyptian  names  as  Thut??wsis,  Ahmosis,  and  the  like.  The 
Septuagint  Greek  translators  of  the  Old  Testament  were  of  the 
same  opinion  as  to  its  Egyptian  origin.  Aaron  and  Miriam 
also  are  claimed  by  some  as  Egyptian,  and  the  name  of 
Phinehas,  the  high  priest,  the  son  of  Aaron,  does   actually 


THE  ARK  289 

seem  to  be  Egyptian.  I  should  not  like,  however,  to  base 
anything  upon  these  Egyptian  etymologies,  but  only  to  call 
attention  to  the  possibility  that  these  names  are  Egyptian. 

Another  point  seems  to  me  of  much  greater  importance. 
The  contents  of  the  ship  or  box  in  Egypt  and  Babylonia  were 
representations  of  the  Deity,  in  one  case  certainly  by  images 
and  in  the  other  probably.  But  the  contents  of  the  Hebrew 
Ark  were  two  tables  of  stone  containing  the  Decalogue.  The 
direct  narratives  of  Exodus  and  Deuteronomy  with  regard  to 
the  contents  of  the  Ark  are  confirmed  by  the  indirect  evidence 
contained  in  its  name,  for  from  the  very  earliest  time  onward, 
as  we  learn  from  the  Books  of  Samuel,  one  designation  of  the 
Ark  was  "Ark  of  the  Covenant." 

Now  we  have  as  yet  found  no  traces  in  Babylonia  of  the 
existence  of  a  sacred  law.  In  Egypt,  on  the  other  hand,  such 
a  law  did  exist.  We  have  not,  it  is  true,  found  the  law  itself, 
but  we  have  found  sufficient  evidence  of  its  existence.  Chapter 
cxxv.  of  the  Book  of  the  Dead  contains  the  justification  of  the 
dead  in  the  lower  world.     The  dead  states— 

"  I  have  not  done  so  and  so, 
I  have  not  done  so  and  so, 
I  have  not  done  so  and  so," 

through  a  long  and  varying  number  of  negations.  But  these 
negations  suppose  the  existence  of  a  law  forbidding  the  things 
enumerated.  It  is  not  necessary  to  suppose  that  that  law  was 
written  out  in  all  its  details.  Possibly  it  may  have  been 
an  oral  instruction  throughout,  but,  as  the  different  copies 
of  chapter  cxxv.  of  the  Book  of  the  Dead  show,  it  was  certainly 
a  constant  quantity  in  its  main  prescriptions.  Moreover,  it 
was  recognised  as  a  sacred,  God-given  law,  which  it  was 
incumbent  upon  every  one  to  keep.  This  law  contains,  as  we 
know  from  the  negations  in  the  Book  of  the  Dead,  substanti- 
ally the  entire  second  part  of  our  Decalogue — "Thou  shalt 
not  kill.  Thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery,"  etc.  It  had,  there- 
fore, a  high  ethical  character ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  these 
ethical   prescriptions  were  mixed  in  with  matter  of  a  ritual, 

u 


290   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

non-ethical,  and  often  trivial  character,  the  great  moral  com- 
mandments and  the  most  insignificant  ritual  prescriptions 
being  placed  on  the  same  footing  side  by  side. 

The  relation  between  this  sacred  religious  law  of  the 
Egyptians  and  the  Hebrew  Decalogue  may  be  described  as 
something  the  same  as  the  relation  of  the  Lord's  Prayer  to  the 
teachings  of  the  rabbins.  It  has  often  been  pointed  out  that 
the  petitions  of  the  Lord's  Prayer  may  all  be  found  here  and 
there  among  the  teachings  of  the  Jewish  rabbins.  What 
makes  that  prayer  so  wonderful  is  that  it  takes  just  the  great 
and  high  things,  leaving  out  all  that  is  insignificant  and 
trivial.  It  is  its  inspiration  to  do  this  which  places  it  above 
any  prayer  that  man  has  ever  uttered. 

My  suggestion,  then,  is  that  Moses  was  acquainted  with  the 
wisdom  of  Egypt,  in  so  far  that  he  knew  the  practice  of  carry- 
ing the  god  in  a  ship-box,  and  was  acquainted  with  at  least  the 
main  features  of  the  sacred  religious  law,  on  the  observance  of 
which  the  future  happiness  of  the  Egyptian  was  supposed  to 
depend. 

And  now  a  word  about  the  use  of  the  Ark  among  the 
Hebrews.  It  differed  from  the  use  of  the  ship  or  box  among 
the  Egyptians  and  Babylonians,  as  their  conditions  differed. 
In  the  case  of  both  these  nations  the  gods  had  settled  abodes 
— temples,  and  the  ships  were  used  merely  to  transport  them 
about  the  country,  that  they  might  see  and  bless  it,  or  to 
convey  them  from  temple  to  temple  in  connexion  with  certain 
feasts.  But  the  Ark  of  the  Israelites  had  at  first  no  temple  in 
which  to  dwell.  Its  covering  was  a  tent,  and  where  the  Ark 
and  its  tent  were,  there  was  God.  So  when  the  Ark  was 
taken  out  they  said  (Num.  x.  35),  "Rise  up,  Yahaweh,  and 
let  Thine  enemies  be  scattered ;  and  let  them  that  hate  Thee 
flee  before  Thee."  And  when  it  came  back  they  said  (36), 
"Return,  Yahaweh,  unto  the  ten  thousand  thousands  of 
Israel."  In  the  Book  of  Samuel  we  read  that  the  Ark  was 
carried  out  to  battle,  in  order  that  Yahaweh  might  fight  with 
and  for  His  people.  This  use  continued  certainly  until  and 
during  the  time  of  David.     After  David's  time  the  Ark  passes 


THE   ARK 


291 


out  of  sight.  We  are  told  that  it  was  placed  in  the  Holy  of 
Holies  of  Solomon's  Temple,  which  was  the  especial  abode 
of  Yahaweh.  Whether  or  not  it  was  ever  brought  out  for 
any  purpose  we  do  not  know.  The  Bible  is  silent,  and  it  is 
generally  assumed  that  the  Ark  was  henceforward  stationary. 
God,  Yahaweh,  was  now  localised  in  the  Temple  at  Jerusalem, 
and  especially  in  the  Holy  of  Holies  in  that  Temple.  That 
the  Ark  continued  to  play  an  important  part  in  the  religion  of 
the  people  of  Jerusalem  up  to  the  Exile  we  may  conjecture, 
however,  from  a  reference  in  the  Book  of  Jeremiah  (Jer.  iii.  1 6), 
"They  shall  say  no  more.  The  ark  of  the  covenant  of  Yahaweh: 
neither  shall  it  come  to  mind :  neither  shall  they  remember  it; 
neither  shall  they  visit  it."  It  is  clear  from  this  that  the  Ark 
of  the  Covenant  of  Yahaweh  was  considered  an  especial 
representative  of  the  presence  of  Yahaweh  and  a  guarantee 
of  His  protection,  and  that  in  the  time  of  Jeremiah  it  played 
some  part  in  the  ritual.  Jeremiah,  after  his  fashion  with 
regard  to  all  externals,  holds  it  light,  and  declares  that  the 
time  shall  come  when  it  will  be  done  away  with,  and  no  one 
will  think  of  it  any  more.  That  time  came  with  the  Exile. 
The  Ark  was  destroyed.  It  had  done  its  work,  and  that 
a  very  important  work.  Its  use  and  purpose  had  been  to 
carry  God  for  the  Israelites  from  Sinai  and  Horeb  into 
Palestine.  Without  the  Ark,  Israel  entering  Palestine  would 
soon  have  forsaken  Yahaweh  its  God,  and  become  a  worshipper 
of  the  gods  of  the  land.  It  preserved  among  the  people  a 
consciousness  of  the  presence  of  Yahaweh,  By  means  of 
the  two  tables  of  the  commandments  which  were  in  it,  it 
held  up  to  the  Israelites  the  thought  of  a  God  of  ethical  law. 
But  the  time  came  when  the  tables  of  stone  on  which  the 
Law  was  written,  with  the  Ark  which  contained  them,  might 
have  become  a  mere  fetich,  reverenced  for  their  antiquity  and 
regarded  as  being  themselves  practically  God.  This  outward 
must  be  done  away  with,  the  Law  of  God  must  be  graven,  as 
Jeremiah  said,  on  the  hearts  of  men,  and  God  known  as 
residing  not  in  the  Ark  or  by  the  Ark,  but  with  His  people 
everywhere. 


292   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Moses  made  an  immense  step  forward  in  religion  when, 
by  the  inspiration  of  God,  he  gave  the  IsraeUtes  the  Ark  and 
its  tables  of  stone.  But  the  day  came  when,  if  the  Israelites 
were  to  advance  further  Godward,  the  Ark  must  be  destroyed. 
Its  destruction  was  another  step  on  the  Godward  path  which 
was  to  bring  man  at  last  face  to  face  with  the  omnipresent 
God,  without  temple,  without  ark,  and  without  tables  of 
stone. 


CHAPTER   XV 
THE   BOOK   OF   DANIEL 

ON  grounds  of  internal  evidence  the  Book  of  Daniel  was 
ascribed  to  the  time  of  Antiochus  IV.  (b.c.  173-164), 
even  before  archaeological  discoveries  in  Babylonia  and  Persia 
had  placed  in  our  hands  contemporary  records  of  the  kings 
of  Babylon  and  Persia  mentioned  in  that  book.  Those  dis- 
coveries have,  however,  played  so  great  a  part  in  confirming 
the  literary  and  historical  evidence  that  I  have  placed  this 
discussion  of  the  problems  of  the  Book  of  Daniel  in  the  section 
devoted  more  particularly  to  Archaeology  and  the  Bible. 

It  is  now  generally  admitted  that  the  Book  of  Daniel  was 
composed  somewhere  in  the  period  b.c.  168-164.  In  general 
the  arguments  for  this  date  are  as  follows : — 

1.  In  the  Jewish  canon  Daniel  stands,  not  among  the 
Prophets,  but  in  the  Writings  or  Hagiographa,  and  toward  the 
very  end  of  those  Writings,  immediately  after  Esther  and 
before  the  books  of  Ezra,  Nehemiah,  and  Chronicles.  The 
force  of  this  argument  will  be  appreciated  by  reference  to  the 
first  chapter  of  this  volume,  on  the  English  Bible. 

2.  While  Jesus  Ben-Sirach,  who  wrote  somewhere  between 
B.C.  290  and  190,  mentions  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  Ezekiel,  and  the 
twelve  Prophets,  he  does  not  refer  to  Daniel. 

3.  In  Daniel  ix.  2  reference  is  made  to  a  collection  of  sacred 
books  in  which,  from  the  context,  it  is  clear  that  the  Book  of 
Jeremiah  was  included.  As  the  Prophets  were  not  collected 
as  sacred  books  before,  at  the  earliest,  the  third  century  l.c, 

293 


294   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

this  reference  would  imply  a  time  of  composition  as  late  as  or 
later  than  that  date. 

4  The  evidence  of  language  shows  that  the  book  must  have 
been  written  after  the  commencement  of  the  Greek  period. 
The  Hebrew,  in  which  part  of  the  book  is  composed,  is  of 
a  corrupted  and  late  form.  The  Aramaic,  in  which  the  other 
half  of  the  book  is  composed,  is  a  Western  Aramaic  dialect, 
akin  to  that  spoken  in  and  about  Palestine,  and  late,  not  early. 
There  are  a  number  of  Persian  words  used  in  the  book,  in- 
dicating corruption  of  the  language  by  contact  with  the 
Persians,  and  a  few  Greek  names  for  musical  instruments, 
one  of  which,  psanterin^  is  clearly  the  Greek  psalterion^  with 
the  substitution  of  n  for  /,  a  Macedonian  dialect  peculiarity, 
indicating  that  the  word  was  borrowed  from  the  Macedonian 
conquerors. 

5.  The  use  of  the  name  Chaldea?!  to  signify  not  a  people 
or  a  nation,  but  a  caste  of  wise  men. 

6.  Historical  inaccuracies  and  peculiarities,  as  {a)  the  use 
of  Nebuchadnezzar  for  Nebuchadrezzar ;  (h)  the  story  of  the 
seven  years'  insanity  of  Nebuchadnezzar;  {c)  the  statement 
that  this  Nebuchadnezzar  besieged  Jerusalem  and  carried  away 
some  of  the  sacred  vessels  in  the  third  year  of  Jehoiakim 
(Daniel  i.  i,  2) ;  {d)  the  statement  that  Belshazzar  was  the 
last  king  of  Babylonia  and  Nebuchadrezzar  his  father,  whereas 
we  know  from  the  records  that  Nabonidus,  a  man  in  no  wise 
related  to  Nebuchadrezzar,  was  the  last  king  of  Babylonia  (he 
had  a  son,  Belsarusur,  who  had  apparently  become  the  king 
Belshazzar  of  Daniel) ;  {e)  the  statement  that  Darius  the  Mede, 
son  of  Ahasuerus,  became,  after  the  death  of  Belshazzar, 
"king  over  the  realm  of  the  Chaldeans,"  whereas  we  know 
from  the  records  that  Cyrus  succeeded  Nabonidus,  and  was  in 
turn  succeeded  by  Cambyses,  he  by  Pseudo-Smerdis,  and  he 
by  Darius  Hystaspis,  a  Persian ;  (/)  there  are  further  histori- 
cal inaccuracies,  which  I  shall  not  endeavour  to  point  out  here 
in  detail,  with  regard  to  the  Median,  Babylonian,  and  Persian 
kingdoms,  the  order  of  succession  of  which  is  confused,  and 
the  names  and  succession  of  the  Persian  kings. 


THE   BOOK   OF   DANIEL  295 

7.  The  above  arguments  would  go  to  show  that  the  book 
was  not  written  during  the  Captivity  and  the  beginning  of  the 
Persian  period  immediately  succeeding  the  Captivity,  but  at 
a  period  following  the  conquest  of  Persia  by  Alexander  the 
Great.  But  within  this  period  we  are  able  to  fix  the  date  still 
more  exactly  from  historical  allusions  in  the  book.  The 
various  visions  contained  in  the  Book  of  Daniel  deal  with  a 
period  closing  some  time  in  the  reign  of  Antiochus  Epiphancs. 
So,  in  the  second  chapter,  Nebuchadnezzar's  dream,  and  the 
seventh  chapter,  Daniel's  dream,  in  the  first  year  of  Belshazzar, 
we  have  a  view  of  history  from  the  Chaldean  or  Babylonian 
empire  of  Nebuchadnezzar  on  to  the  time  of  the  Seleucidcc. 
First  we  have  the  Chaldean  empire ;  then,  according  to  the 
peculiar  history  of  the  Book  of  Daniel,  the  Median,  then  the 
Persian,  and  then  the  Macedonian.  In  the  second  chapter, 
Nebuchadnezzar's  dream  of  the  statue,  there  proceeds  out  of 
the  Macedonian  kingdom  a  divided  kingdom,  part  of  iron 
and  part  of  clay,  representing  the  divisions  of  Alexander's 
Macedonian  empire  between  the  SeleucidiE  and  the  Ptolemies. 
The  seventh  chapter,  the  dream  of  the  four  great  beasts, 
carries  this  history  down  somewhat  further.  Out  of  the 
Macedonian  empire  arise  ten  new  kingdoms,  represented  by 
ten  horns,  among  which  comes  up  another  little  horn  that 
roots  out  three  kingdoms,  etc.  Here  we  have  clearly  an 
allusion  to  Antiochus  IV. 

In  the  eighth  chapter  the  Medes  and  Persians  are  repre- 
sented as  a  sort  of  dual  empire  under  the  figure  of  the  two- 
horned  ram,  one  horn  representing  the  Medes  and  the  other 
the  Persians.  The  ram  is  overturned  by  a  he-goat  from  the 
West,  with  a  horn  between  his  eyes,  representing  Alexander 
the  Great.  Out  of  this  horn  came  in  time  four  horns  toward 
the  four  winds  of  heaven,  and  out  of  them  a  little  horn, 
which  took  away  the  continual  burnt  offering  and  cast  down 
the  place  of  the  sanctuary.  The  reference  is  clearly  to  the 
profanation  of  the  sanctuary  at  Jerusalem  by  Antiochus 
Epiphanes  in  B.C.   168. 

The  twenty-sixth  and  twenty-seventh  verses  of  the  ninth 


296   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

chapter  give  us  somewhat  further  details.  They  contain  refer- 
ences to  the  deposition  of  the  high  priest  Onias,  in  B.C.  175, 
his  assassination,  in  B.C.  172,  the  profanation  of  the  sanctuary, 
in  B.C.  168,  with  the  cessation  of  sacrifice  and  oblation,  and 
apparently,  also,  the  purification  of  the  altar,  in  B.C.  165. 

The  tenth  and  following  chapters  enter  much  further  into 
historical  details  covering  the  same  general  period.  For  the 
earlier  part  of  that  period  the  references  are  vague  and  in- 
correct. The  writer  knows  of  only  four  Persian  kings,  suc- 
cessors of  Darius  the  Mede  (xi.  2).  As  we  proceed,  however, 
the  history  becomes  more  accurate  and  detailed,  until  at  last, 
at  the  close  of  the  first  or  the  beginning  of  the  second  century 
B.C.,  it  becomes  a  chronological  record  of  great  historical 
value,  recounting  the  relations  of  the  Ptolemaic  and  Seleucid 
kings  and  their  wars  for  the  possession  of  Palestine.  In  xi.  18 
there  is  an  allusion  to  the  victory  of  the  Roman  Consul, 
Lucius  Scipio,  over  Antiochus  IIL,  at  Magnesia,  in  B.C.  190; 
in  verse  30  to  the  order  of  Popilius  Lsenas,  speaking  in 
behalf  of  the  Roman  Senate  to  Antiochus  Epiphanes,  to  leave 
Egypt,  in  B.C.  168.  Then  follow  a  number  of  verses  giving 
an  account  of  the  persecution  of  the  Jewish  religion  by 
Antiochus  and  the  actions  and  views  of  the  latter,  which 
agree,  in  general,  with  the  representations  of  the  First  Book 
of  Maccabees,  ending  with  a  notice  of  Antiochus'  death,  in 
verse  45.  But  the  notice  of  his  death  is  not  in  accordance 
with  historical  fact.  He  is  here  represented  as  pitching  his 
tents  in  Palestine,  between  Jerusalem  and  the  Mediterranean 
Sea,  and,  apparently,  dying  there,  whereas  we  know  that  he 
died  in  an  expedition  against  Labae,  in  the  East.  The  fur- 
ther representations  of  this  particular  prophecy,  contained  in 
chapter  xii.,  are  cast  in  vague  and  general  terms.  The  natural 
conclusion  would  seem  to  be  that  the  writer  was  unfamiliar, 
except  from  vague  and  inaccurate  tradition,  with  the  history  of 
the  period  preceding  the  Alexandrian  conquest ;  and  that,  on 
the  other  hand,  he  had  a  personal  and  accurate  acquaintance 
with  the  history  of  the  times  of  Antiochus  IIL  and  IV.  up 
to  about  B.C.   165  ;  that  at  that  point  his  knowledge  ceased. 


THE   BOOK   OF   DANIEL  297 

Accordingly,  the  composition  of  the  book,  or  at  least  of  the 
final  apocalypse  of  the  book,  may  be  assigned  to  the  year 
B.C.  165  or  the  beginning  of  the  year  164 — that  is,  very 
shortly  before  the  time  of  the  death  of  Antiochus  IV. 

8.  Further  arguments  might  be  presented  from  the  theology 
of  the  book  and  from  its  relation  to  the  books  preceding  and 
following  it.  It  is  the  first  book  in  which  we  have  an  ex- 
pression of  the  belief  in  the  resurrection  of  the  dead.  It 
represents  a  comparatively  developed  angelology,  which  we 
do  not  find  in  any  preceding  book,  but  the  beginnings  of 
which  we  may  observe  in  the  visions  of  the  post-Exilic  prophet 
Zechanah.  It  is  in  the  prophecies  of  this  latter  prophet,  also, 
that  we  find  the  beginnings  of  the  apocalyptic  method,  which 
meets  us  fully  developed  in  the  books  of  Daniel  and  Enoch, 
the  earlier  portion  of  which  last-named  book  is  commonly 
ascribed  to  the  commencement  of  the  second  century  B.C. 
From  this  time  onward,  well  into  the  Christian  era,  we  have 
an  abundance  of  apocalypses,  and  apocalyptic  writing  takes 
the  place  vacated  by  the  cessation  of  prophecy. 

But  as  the  object  of  this  chapter  is  rather  to  deal  with  the 
Book  of  Daniel  in  the  light  of  modern  archaeological  dis- 
coveries, I  shall  pass  on  to  a  consideration  of  some  of  the 
historical  peculiarities  of  the  book  in  comparison  with  the 
Persian  inscriptions. 

As  already  indicated,  history  is  strangely  turned  about  and 
confused  in  the  Book  of  Daniel.  A  curious  example  of  this 
confusion  we  find  in  the  relation  of  the  conquest  of  Belshazzar 
by  Darius.  According  to  the  Book  of  Daniel,  Nebuchadrezzar 
was  succeeded  by  his  son  Belshazzar,  and  Belshazzar  was 
conquered  and  slain  by  "Darius  the  Mcde."  Now  no 
Belshazzar  son  of  Nebuchadrezzar  ever  reigned  in  Babylon, 
and  the  only  Darius  who  can  possibly  be  intended  by  the 
designation  "Darius  the  Mede"  is  Darius  Hystaspis,  who 
was  not  an  almost  immediate  successor  of  Nebuchadrezzar, 
but  was  separated  from  him  by  several  reigns;  neither  was 
it  he  who  overthrew  the  Babylonian  empire  and  established 


298   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

the  rule  of  the  "  Medes  and  Persians."  Nebuchadrezzar  was 
succeeded  by  Evil-Merodach,  he  by  Neriglissar,  he  by 
Labashi-Marduk,  and  he  by  Nabonidus,  who  was  overthrown 
by  Cyrus.  Cyrus  was  succeeded  by  Cambyses,  he  by  Pseudo- 
Smerdis,  and  he  by  Darius.  It  is  difficult,  at  first  sight 
certainly,  to  understand  how  in  the  stories  contained  in  the 
Book  of  Daniel  history  can  have  become  so  confused  as  to 
bring  Darius  into  such  close  proximity  to  Nebuchadrezzar, 
and  to  make  him.  the  conqueror  of  Babylon  in  the  time  of 
Nebuchadrezzar's  son.  Some  light  is  thrown  upon  this 
difficulty  by  Darius'  Behistun  inscription.  In  that  inscription 
(1.  31  ffi)  we  read  this  account  of  a  revolt  against  Darius  in 
Babylon : — 

"  Further  there  was  a  Babylonian,  Nidintubel  his  name,  son 
of  Aniri,  who  rebelled  in  Babylon,  lying  to  the  people,  and 
saying,  '  I  am  Nebuchadrezzar  son  of  Nabonidus.'  Then  all 
the  Babylonians  went  over  to  that  Nidintubel,  Babylon 
rebelled,  he  made  himself  king  over  Babylon.  .  .  .  Thus 
saith  Darius  the  king :  Then  I  marched  to  Babylon  and 
against  that  Nidintubel  who  called  himself  Nebuchadrezzar. 
The  army  of  Nidintubel  was  placed  upon  ships ;  the  shores 
of  the  Tigris  they  occupied." 

The  next  two  lines  are  not  altogether  intelligible  in  detail, 
but  state  in  general  that  Darius  forced  the  passage  of  the 
Tigris  and  defeated  the  army  of  Nidintubel. 

"On  the  26th  day  of  the  month  Kisleu  we  delivered  battle. 
Thus  saith  Darius  the  king :  Then  I  marched  toward  Babylon. 
I  had  not  yet  reached  Babylon  when  Nidintubel,  who  had 
said,  '  I  am  Nebuchadrezzar,'  marched  against  me  with  an 
army  to  deliver  battle,  to  a  city  named  Zazanu  on  the  shore 
of  the  Euphrates.  There  we  joined  battle.  Ormuzd  was  my 
strong  helper;  by  the  grace  of  Ormuzd  I  smote  the  army 
of  Nidintubel.  One  part  was  driven  into  the  water,  and  the 
water  swept  them  away.  We  joined  battle  on  the  second  day 
of  the  month  Anamaka.     Thus  saith  Darius  the  king :  Then 


THE   BOOK   OF   DANIEL  299 

this  Nidintubel  with  a  few  mounted  soldiers  came  to  Babylon. 
Then  I  came  to  Babylon.  By  the  help  of  Ormuzd  I  took 
Babylon  and  captured  Nidintubel;  and  I  slew  Nidintubel  in 
Babylon." 

Further  on  in  the  same  inscription  (1.  84  ff.)  Darius 
describes  another  revolt  against  himself  of  the  Babylonians, 
in  which  again  the  pretender  to  the  throne  claimed  to  be 
Nebuchadrezzar  son  of  Nabonidus. 

"  Thus  saith  Darius  the  king  :  While  I  was  in  Persia  and 
Media  the  Babylonians  revolted  against  me  for  a  second  time. 
A  man  named  Arakhu,  an  Armenian,  son  of  Haldita,  arose 
against  me.  There  is  in  Babylonia  a  district  named  Dubala. 
From  this  place  he  arose  against  me.  He  deceived  the  people 
of  Babylon,  saying,  '  I  am  Nebuchadrezzar  son  of  Nabonidus.' 
Thereupon  the  people  of  Babylon  rebelled  against  me  and 
went  over  to  this  Arakhu.  He  took  Babylon :  he  became 
king  in  Babylon.  Thus  saith  Darius  the  king :  Then  I  sent 
an  army  to  Babylon.  Vindafra,  a  Mede,  my  servant,  I  made 
commander ;  I  sent  him  out,  saying,  '  Go  thither  and  smite 
the  army  of  the  rebels.'  Ormuzd  brought  me  help;  by  the 
grace  of  Ormuzd  Vindafra  took  Babylon  and  smote  the  army 
of  Babylon,  the  rebels,  and  took  them  captive." 

In  1.  90  ff.  he  mentions  in  succession  the  various  pretenders 
who  rebelled  against  him  at  one  time  or  another.  Gomates, 
a  Magian,  who  claimed  to  be  Bardes  son  of  Cyrus;  Ashina, 
who  raised  a  revolt  in  Elam ;  Nidintubel,  a  Babylonian,  who 
claimed  to  be  Nebuchadrezzar  son  of  Nabonidus,  and  who 
made  himself  king  of  Babylon ;  Martes,  a  Persian,  who  led 
a  rebellion  in  Elam;  Phraortes,  a  Median,  who  claimed  to 
be  Xathrites,  of  the  race  of  Cyaxares,  and  who  raised  Media 
against  Darius ;  Sitrantachmes,  a  Sagartian,  who  also  claimed 
to  be  a  descendant  of  Cyaxares  and  raised  part  of  the  same 
country  on  much  the  same  grounds  as  the  preceding ;  Parada, 
a  Margian,  who  led  a  rebellion  in  Margu ;  Veisdates,  a 
Persian,  who  claimed  to  be  Bardes  son  of  Cyrus  and  raised 


300  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

a  rebellion  in  Persia ;  and  Arakhu,  an  Armenian,  who  claimed 
to  be  Nebuchadrezzar  son  of  Nabonidus  and  raised  a  revolt 
in  Babylon.  It  is  worthy  of  note  that  both  pretenders  to 
the  throne  in  Babylon  make  use  of  the  name  Nebuchadrezzar, 
although  according  to  Darius  each  claimed  also  to  be  the  son 
of  Nabonidus.  It  is  clear  that  Nebuchadrezzar  was  the  name 
to  conjure  by  in  Babylonia,  so  that  when  a  man  sought  to 
raise  a  revolt  he  laid  claim  to  this  name  as  a  sure  means 
of  arousing  popular  sentiment  in  his  favour.  This  may  serve 
to  show  us  that  that  confusion  of  Babylonian  history  in  the 
Book  of  Daniel  which  sets  chronology  at  nought  and  gathers 
everything  about  the  name  of  Nebuchadrezzar  was  not 
altogether  an  invention  of  later  Jewish  legends,  but  that 
it  had  its  origin  in  the  popular  ideas  of  the  Babylonians 
themselves. 

In  addition  to  the  record  of  the  two  pretenders  named 
Nebuchadrezzar  contained  in  the  Behistun  inscription,  we 
ha\e  also  some  contract  tablets  from  the  reign  of  one  or  the 
other  of  these  two  pretenders,  presumably  the  first.  In  the 
fourth  volume  of  Schrader's  Sanwilung  von  assyrischen  tmd 
baby  Ionise  he  fi  Texten  are  given  three  of  these  documents  from 
the' reign  of  "  Nebuchadrezzar  III.,"  of  which  two  are  dated  in 
"the  accession  year  of  Nebuchadrezzar,  king  of  Babylon," 
and  one  in  "  the  first  year  of  Nebuchadrezzar,  king  of 
Babylon."  The  names  of  the  members  of  the  Egibi  family 
mentioned  in  these  tablets  are  the  evidence  that  they  do  not 
belong  to  the  reign  of  Nebuchadrezzar  II.,  but  to  that  of 
Nebuchadrezzar  III. 

It  may  be  worth  noting  in  connexion  with  the  dates  of 
th^se  tablets,  which  give  us  for  the  duration  of  the  reign  of 
this  Nebuchadrezzar  III.  portions  at  least  of  two  years,  that 
at  the  close  of  the  third  book  of  his  history  Herodotus 
describes  the  revolt  of  Babylon  and  its  siege  by  Darius  for  a 
period  of  a  little  more  than  twenty  months.  After  he  had 
taken  the  city  he  treated  it,  according  to  Herodotus,  with 
great  severity,  in  striking  contrast  with  the  treatment  it  had 
received     from     Cyrus,    dismantling     its    fortifications,    and 


THE   BOOK   OF   DANIEL  301 


endeavouring  to  destroy  for  ever  its  capacity  to  do  mischief. 
This  siege  naturally  impressed  itself  upon  the  popular  imagi- 
nation more  strongly  than  the  almost  friendly  capture  of  the 
city  by  Cyrus,  and  hence  in  folk-history  Darius,  and  not  Cyrus, 
became  the  conqueror  of  Babylon.  It  is  this  folk-history  which 
is  perpetuated  in  the  Book  of  Daniel. 

Precisely  why  Belshazzar   should   play  such  an   important 
part  in  the  story  I  cannot  conjecture.     All  the  information 
which  we  possess  regarding  him  up  to  the  present  is  very 
little.     We  know  that  Nabonidus  had  a  son  of  this  name,  and 
he  seems  to  have  played  a  role  of  importance,  otherwise  his 
name  would  not  have  been  substituted  in  the  tradition  repre- 
sented in  the  Book  of   Daniel  for  that  of  Nabonidus,  as  it 
evidently  has  been,  adding  one  more  element  of  confusion  to 
those  already  existing.      In  the  folk-history  of  the  Book  of 
Daniel   then,  Belshazzar  has  taken  the  place  of   Nabonidus, 
for  reasons  which  we  do  not  know.     He  is  made  the  son  of 
Nebuchadrezzar,  because  Nebuchadrezzar  was  the  great  king 
of  Babylon,  whose  name  every  one  knew,  and  about  whom 
every  one  was  grouped  in  the  thought  of  the  people.     Darius 
Hystaspis  takes  the  place  of  Cyrus  as  conqueror  of  Babylon 
because    of    his    capture    of    the    city   in    the  war    against 
Nebuchadrezzar  III.,  a  siege  and  capture  which  impressed 
the  popular  mind  much  more  forcibly  than  that  of  Cyrus. 
Why  he  is  called  the  Mede  I  do  not  know.  ,  ^     .  ,  . 

Another  instance  of  folk-history  in  the  Book  of  Daniel  is 
the  story  of  the  three  children  in  the  fiery  furnace,  recounted 
in  Daniel  iii.     It  is  a  matter  of  surprise  to  me  that  I  have 
never  seen  this  story  brought  into  conjunction  with  Jeremiah 
xxix  22     Turning  to  the  latter  passage,  we  read  that  Jeremiah 
addressed  a  letter  to  the  captive  Jews  in  Babylonia,  bidding 
them  to  build  houses  and  dwell  in  them;  and  to  plant  gardens 
and  eat  the  fruits  thereof;  to  take  wives  and  beget  sons  and 
daughters  ;  and  to  take  wives  and  husbands  for  their  sons  and 
daSte      so  that  they  might  also  have  sons  and  daughters. 
Se  bids  Ihem  to  seek  the  peace  of  the  land  where  they  are, 
Tnd  not  to  Usten  to  the  prophets  and  diviners  among  them, 


302   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

and  tells  them,  "After  seventy  years  be  accomplished  for 
Babylon,  I  will  visit  you  and  perform  My  good  word  toward 
you,  in  causing  you  to  return  to  this  place."  Then  he  mentions 
by  name  Ahab,  son  of  Kolaiah,  and  Zedekiah,  son  of  Maaseiah, 
who  have  evidently  been  stirring  up  the  Jews  in  Babylonia  to 
revolt  against  Nebuchadrezzar,  saying  that  they  are  prophesy- 
ing a  lie,  and  that  Nebuchadrezzar,  king  of  Babylon,  shall 
slay  them,  and  that  they  shall  become  a  byword  to  all  the 
captives  of  Judah  who  there  are  in  Babylon,  saying,  "  the  Lord 
make  thee  like  Zedekiah  and  like  Ahab,  whom  the  king  ot 
Babylon  roasted  in  the  fire." 

What  put  into  Jeremiah's  head  the  idea  that  these  men 
would  be  punished  in  such  a  manner?  The  fact  that 
Nebuchadrezzar  was  known  to  have  made  use  before  of  this 
form  of  punishment?  Giesebrecht,  in  his  commentary  on 
Jeremiah,  refers  to  "  similar  Persian  customs,"  and  I  suppose 
it  probable  that  this  barbarous  method  of  punishment  by 
burning  can  be  established  as  practised  in  that  and  sur- 
rounding countries  at  various  times.  But,  however  that  may 
be,  the  fact  that  this  statement  in  Jeremiah's  letter  was  pre- 
served and  has  been  handed  down  to  us  may  fairly  be  regarded 
as  evidence  that  this  was  no  idle  wish  of  Jeremiah,  but  that 
this  punishment  was  actually  inflicted  upon  these  two  prophets, 
Ahab  and  Zedekiah. 

Now  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  position  which  these 
two  men  represented  was  the  so-called  patriotic  position  of 
that  day,  while  that  of  Jeremiah  was  the  so-called  unpatriotic 
position.  He  was  often  in  a  minority  of  one  or  two  in  advo- 
cating the  policy  of  submission.  He  was  regarded  by  the 
biilk  of  his  compatriots  as  a  Babylonian  sympathiser,  if  not 
as  an  actual  traitor ;  and  the  Babylonians,  on  their  part,  seem 
to  have  regarded  him  as  a  sort  of  secret  ally,  so  that  after  the 
capture  of  Jerusalem  he  was  treated  by  them  with  marked 
honour. 

The  Book  of  Daniel  made  over  again  for  a  special  purpose 
traditions  which  had  come  down,  sometimes  in  a  very  con- 
fused form,  from  an  earlier  period.     It  seems  to  me  that  in 


THE   BOOK   OF   DANIEL  303 

the  story  contained  in  the  third  chapter  of  Daniel,  of  the 
three  children,  Shadrach,  Meshach,  and  Abed-nego,  who  were 
cast  into  the  fiery  furnace  and  miraculously  saved,  we  have 
the  legendary  account  of  Nebuchadrezzar's  treatment  of 
Ahab  and  Zedekiah,  or  some  of  their  compeers.  It  has 
come  down  to  us  through  the  medium  of  the  popular, 
patriotic  party,  the  party  opposed  by  Jeremiah,  but  the 
party  which  was  both  the  most  numerous  and  the  most 
influential  in  his  time. 

One  of  the  problems  which  meets  us  in  the  Book  of 
Daniel,  on  which  it  has  been  supposed  that  Assyriology 
might  throw  some  light,  is  the  interpretation  of  the  Mene, 
Mene^  Tekel,  Upharsin^  of  Daniel  v.  25.  Noldeke,  Hof- 
mann,  Ganneau,  and  Prince  have  endeavoured  to  explain 
these  words  from  the  Assyrian.  It  should  be  clear,  from  the 
mistakes  in  Babylonian  names  and  in  the  interpretation  of 
those  names  in  the  Book  of  Daniel,  that  the  writer  of  that 
book  had  no  acquaintance  with  the  Babylonian  language  or 
the  cuneiform  script.  Attention  has  already  been  called  to 
the  incorrect  form  Nebuchadnezzar  instead  of  Nebuchadrezzar. 
In  Daniel  iv.  8  the  name  Belteshazzar  is  incorrectly  inter- 
preted as  containing  in  composition  the  name  of  the  god  Bel. 
It  is  clearly  the  Babylonian  Belatsu-Usur,  which  means,  "May 
his  life  be  preserved,"  the  word  Belatsu,  "his  life,"  having 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  name  Bel.  The  outward 
similarity  has  misled  the  writer,  who  was  evidently  unfamiliar 
with  Babylonian.  More  curious  is  the  name  Abed-nego, 
which  is  clearly  an  error  for  Abed-nebo,  "servant  of  Nebo." 
In  its  present  distorted  form  it  makes  no  sense. 

It  is  not  a  comparison  with  the  Babylonian  which  gives  us 
the  clue  to  the  meaning  of  Daniel  v.  25,  but  the  text  itself. 
In  the  explanation  of  these  words,  given  in  verses  26-28,  we 
find  simply  Mene^  Tekel,  Feres.  Turning  to  the  Greek  text, 
we  find  that  in  verse  25  we  have  not  Mene^  Me  fie ^  Tekel^ 
Upharsin^  but  as  in  the  Hebrew  of  verses  26-28,  Mene^ 
Tekel,  Feres.  The  combined  evidence  of  the  Hebrew  of 
verses    26-28    and   the   Greek   version    of    verse   25   would 


304  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

seem  to  render  it  almost  self-evident  that  the  Hebrew  text  of 
verse  25  is  incorrect.  The  Mene  in  the  Hebrew  text  seems 
to  have  been  repeated  by  accident,  and  the  Peres  has  either 
been  inflected,  or  else  we  have  the  conjunction  with  the  plural 
form  of  the  word  ^D"iD,  "Persian."  If  the  Greek  text  be 
adopted  and  the  pointing  of  the  words  be  omitted  entirely, 
which  is  what  the  story  itself  requires,  the  whole  passage 
becomes  plain.  We  have  two  roots,  meaning  simply,  number 
and  weighs  and  a  third  which  may  equally  well  mean  divide, 
or  Persian,  an  ambiguity  that  gives  opportunity  for  the  word 
play  contained  in  the  explanation.  The  problem  given  to 
Daniel  is  to  explain  what  is  meant  by  the  three  words  on  the 
wall,  nu77iber,  weigh,  divide,  or  Persian.  His  skill  or  his 
inspiration  is  shown  in  the  finding  of  a  meaning  which  pre- 
cisely fitted  these  three  enigmatic  roots  to  the  circumstances. 
Remembering  that  the  writing  must  have  been  without  vowels, 
the  conditions  are  very  much  the  same  as  if  we  should  have 
put  before  us  the  letters  N-M-BR-W-G-H-D-V-D,  except  that 
in  this  case  there  is  not  in  the  last  root  the  same  opportunity 
for  a  play  upon  words  as  the  Hebrew  affords.  The  language 
used  is,  of  course,  Aramaic.  Daniel  interprets  the  meaning 
of  the  root  number  as,  "  God  hath  numbered  thy  kingdom, 
and  brought  it  to  an  end."  The  root  weigh  he  interprets  to 
mean,  "Thou  art  weighed  in  the  balance,  and  found  wanting." 
The  third  root,  which  might  mean  equally  well  divide  or 
Persian,  he  interprets  thus :  "  Thy  kingdom  is  divided,  and 
given  to  the  Medes  and  Persians." 

It  may  be  asked.  Why  could  not  the  Chaldeans,  sooth- 
sayers, and  so  forth  read  these  letters  ?  I  do  not  understand 
that  the  text  implies  that  they  could  not  read  the  individual 
characters,  but  merely  that  they  could  not  so  read  them  as  to 
make  any  sense  out  of  them.  "To  read  the  writing  and  to 
make  known  its  interpretation"  (v.  8)  are  not  two  altogether 
different  things,  but  either  parts  of  the  same  thing,  or  at  least 
most  closely  connected  one  with  the  other.  This  duplicate 
method  of  expression  is  characteristic  of  the  style  of  the  Book 
of  Daniel  throughout.     The  Chaldeans  could  not  read  the 


THE   BOOK   OF   DANIEL 


j^D 


letters  in  the  sense  that  they  could  not  read  them  so  as    to 
make  any  sense. 

The  untenability  of  Noldeke's  interpretation,  and  with  it  of 
the  interpretation  of  Hofmann,i  Prince,  and  Ganneau  is  set 
forth  in  a  very  few  words  and  very  effectively  in  Behrmann's 
commentary  on  the  Book  of  Daniel. 

One  point  which  Noldeke  makes  in  his  discussion  of  the 
subject  is  the  use  of  the  word  DID,  in  what  he  regards  as  an 
unreal  sense.     He  says  :  "  With  the  first  two  words  the  simple 
sense  'number'  and   'weigh'  may  do,  but  Dns,   'divide,'  is 
no  longer  in  actual  use,   while  the  substantive  DID,   in  the 
sense  'half-mina,'  w^as  still  common  among  the  later  Jews." 
The  context  {v.  28)  is  the  best  evidence  of  the  sense  intended 
to  be  attached,  and  capable  of  being  attached  to  the  root 
letters  D12.      The  word  is  used   in   the  same  sense  in  the 
Targum  to  2  Kings  iv.  39.     It  is  true  that  this  is  not  the 
common  root  for  "  divide,"  but  its  choice  in  this  place  is  for 
the  purpose  of  a  play  on  words,  since  the  same  letters  also 
mean  "  Persian."     Noldeke  is  driven  to  conjecture  to  account 
for  the  pointing  in  the  forms  -'i?.^  and  Dl?,  words  which  we 
do  not  actually  find  pointed  in  this  manner  in  any  Semitic 
language  in  any  sense.     ^*.^P,  on  the  other  hand,  is  properly 
pointed  as  a  participle  passive  of  the  Pe'al  form  of  the  verb 
N3tD,    "number."      Noldeke    says    that    this    would    be    the 
correct  absolute  form  for  the  Syriac  word  for  inina ;  but  how- 
ever that  may  be,  we  do  not  actually  find  the  word  so  pointed 
in  the  sense  of  uiina^  which  he  and  the  others  above  mentioned 
would  give  it.     It  is  tempting  to  add  to  the  possibilities  of  the 
sense  of  the  words  on  the  wall  the  further  meaning  7nina^ 
shekel,  half-shekel,  and  the  letters  used  are  certainly  capable  of 
this  further  sense.     On  the  other  hand,  the  reading  and  ex- 
planation of  the  words  in  verses  26-28  make  no  allusion  to 
such  a  sense,  which  would  have  been  done,  I  think,  had  such 
an  additional  sense  been  intended.     I  am  inclined  to  think, 
therefore,  with  Behrmann,  that  the  tempting  resemblance  of 

^  Zeitschrift  fiir  Assyriohgie,  ii.  45-48. 


3o6    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

these  words  to  the  words  for  viina^  shekel^  and  half-shekel  is 
due  to  accident. 

The  real  difficulty  in  the  passage  is  one  of  text  corruption 
and  of  an  erroneous  late  pointing.  The  correct  text  of  verse 
25  is,  as  I  have  already  pointed  out,  simply  DID  bpn  fc<itO. 
In  the  individual  text  from  which  our  present  Hebrew  text 
is  descended  a  scribe  doubled  the  NJD,  presumably  by  acci- 
dent. He  attached  DID  to  the  preceding  words  by  the 
conjunction  1,  an  alteration  of  text  which  is  very  common,  as 
can  be  seen  by  a  comparison  of  parallel  passages  in  our 
Hebrew  text  of  the  Bible.  Conscious  of  the  play  on  the 
word  "Persian"  contained  in  012,  he  further  changed  that 
word,  accidentally  or  intentionally,  to  ^D"iD  (cf.  Dan.  vi.  29 ; 
Neh.  xii.  22).  A  |  was  added  to  it,  either  to  put  it  in  the 
plural  or  purely  by  accident. 

The  pointing  of  the  words  is  very  perplexing.  No  explana- 
tion of  any  sort  which  has  yet  been  offered  seems  satisfactory. 
Now  the  Hebrew  and  the  Greek  do  not  altogether  agree  in 
regard  to  the  pointing.  The  former  has  a  uniform  point- 
ing— DIS  7\>'7s  ^^.5P.  The  latter  has  a  different  pointing  for 
each  word — /xav?},  ^ckcA,  (/xxpes,  which  would  correspond  to 
D"1S  7\>'^  t^?.P.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  pointing  of 
the  Hebrew  text  is  the  more  original,  and  that  it  is  intention- 
ally artificial.  The  words  were  without  pointing,  not  intended 
to  be  spoken.  They  represented  merely  the  three  radicals  of 
the  three  roots  without  vowels.  But  in  reading  the  text  aloud 
it  was  necessary  to  pronounce  these  three  words  in  some 
manner.  They  were  for  this  purpose  pointed,  and  inten- 
tionally so  pointed  that  they  should  not  be  identical  with  any 
of  the  inflected  forms  from  those  roots,  and  they  were  pointed 
in  a  uniform  manner.  The  pointing  of  ^53P  in  such  a  manner 
that  it  can  be  read  as  a  passive  participle  is  an  accident  due 
to  the  fact  that  that  participle  is  regularly  \5P  and  not  N*.5P. 
The  changes  in  the  Greek  are  due  in  the  case  of  the  e  in  the 
final  syllables  of  Q^KkX  and  <^a/3es  to  the  fact  that  those  were 
closed,  not  open,  syllables  as  in  /aav?). 

But  the  most  perplexing  problem  of  the  Book  of  Daniel 


THE   BOOK   OF   DANIEL  307 

has  been  its  composition  in  two  languages  instead  of  one. 
Chapter  i.-ii.  3  is  written  in  Hebrew.  The  fourth  verse  of  the 
second  chapter  begins  thus:  "Then  spake  the  Chaldseans  to  the 
king  in  Aramaic."  From  that  point  to  the  end  of  the  seventh 
chapter  Aramaic  is  used.  The  eighth  and  following  chapters, 
like  the  first  chapter,  are  written  in  Hebrew.  Following  Jerome 
it  was  formerly  supposed  that  Aramaic  was  here  used,  because 
it  was  the  language  of  the  Chaldaeans.  The  discoveries  of 
the  last  half-century  have  shown  conclusively,  however,  that 
this  was  not  the  case;  that  the  Aramaic  here  used  was  not 
only  not  the  language  of  the  Chaldaeans,  but  not  even  the 
form  of  Aramaic  which  was  used  in  Babylonia  and  the  East. 
It  is  a  Western  Aramaic  dialect,  akin  to  the  Palmyrene,  and 
almost  identical  with  the  Aramaic  of  the  Targum  of  Onkelos. 
It  is,  in  fact,  the  vernacular  of  Palestine,  the  language  spoken 
by  the  Jewish  people,  which  supplanted  Hebrew,  the  latter 
being  retained  only  as  a  sacred  language. 

After  this  fact  was  clearly  established,  the  theory  was  ad- 
vanced that  the  whole  book  was  originally  written  in  Hebrew, 
but  a  portion  of  it  having  been  lost,  there  has  come  down 
to  us  in  place  of  this  an  Aramaic  translation,  or  Targum.  I'his 
theory  was  proved  on  literary  grounds  to  be  untenable,  and  it 
is  now  generally  admitted  that  part  of  the  book  was  written  in 
the  vernacular  Aramaic  and  part  in  the  sacred  Hebrew,  as  we 
now  have  it. 

It  will  be  observed  that  the  last  verse  of  the  seventh  chapter, 
concluding  the  Aramaic  part  of  the  book,  is  the  closing 
formula  for  a  book  or  writing— "  Here  is  the  end  of  the 
matter,"  etc.  Again,  at  the  commencement  of  the  Aramaic 
section,  we  have  the  separation  from  the  preceding  Hebrew 
carefully  marked  by  the  insertion  at  the  close  of  the  Hebrew 
section,  which  is  of  the  nature  of  an  introduction,  of  the  words 
"in  Aramaic."  But  the  Aramaic  section  as  it  now  stands, 
while  complete  at  the  end  and  rounded  off  with  a  formula 
which  indicates  the  close  of  a  writing,  is  incomplete  at  the 
commencement.  The  method  of  junction  with  it  of  the 
present  introduction  seems,  however,  to  support  the  evidence 


3o8    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

of  the  difference  of  language  in  indicating  that  the  Hebrew 
first  chapter  and  the  Aramaic  second  chapter  were  not  written 
together.  But  if  this  be  the  case,  then  the  Aramaic  section 
must  have  had  another  introduction,  now  lost,  teUing  in  sub- 
stance that  Nebuchadnezzar  dreamed  a  dream.  For  this  has 
been  substituted  a  statement  to  that  effect  in  Hebrew,  probably 
a  summary  of  the  lost  Aramaic  introduction.  This  statement 
is  part  of  a  longer  Hebrew  section,  now  constituting  the  intro- 
duction to  the  entire  Book  of  Daniel,  in  which  we  are  told 
who  Daniel  was  and  his  high  character  for  wisdom,  resulting 
from  his  minute  adherence  to  the  ritual  prescriptions  of  the 
Law  with  regard  to  clean,  unclean,  etc. 

The  Aramaic  section  of  the  Book  of  Daniel  contains  a 
series  of  folk  stories  about  the  wonderful  wisdom  and  the 
wonderful  deliverances  of  Daniel  and  his  three  friends, 
Shadrach,  Meshach,  and  Abednego,  in  the  times  of  Nebu- 
chadnezzar, Belshazzar,  and  Darius,  prefaced  by  a  dream  of 
Nebuchadnezzar,  and  concluded  by  a  vision  or  apocalypse  of 
Daniel,  the  two  covering  substantially  the  same  ground.  The 
scene  of  action  is  Babylon. 

The  succeeding  Hebrew  section  of  the  book,  like  the  pre- 
ceding introduction  to  chapter  i.,  contains  no  folk  stories. 
It  is  more  of  the  nature  of  a  learned  work  referring,  as  in 
the  ninth  chapter,  to  the  sacred  writings  of  the  Jews  and 
showing  a  careful  study  and  a  fairly  advanced  mystical  inter- 
pretation of  those  writings.  The  scene  of  action  appears  to 
be  Shushan,  or  Susa,  the  Persian  capital.  It  deals  with 
mystical  figures — "  2000  and  300  evenings  and  mornings," 
(viii.  14),  "weeks  and  half-weeks,"  etc.  The  first  chapter 
of  this  section  is,  as  to  its  meaning,  largely  a  repetition  of 
chapter  viii.,  and  indeed  it  might  be  called  a  variant  of 
that  chapter,  carrying  the  vision  forward,  however,  a  little 
beyond  the  point  at  which  that  vision  closed.  Chapter  ix. 
is  a  confession  of  sin  and  a  prayer  for  deliverance,  followed  by 
a  brief  vision,  the  end  of  which  is  the  pollution  of  the  altar  in 
B.C.  168.  The  remaining  chapters,  x.-xii.,  are,  under  the  form 
of  a  vision,  an  historical  survey  of  the  period  succeeding  the 


THE   BOOK   OF   DANIEL  309 

death  of  Alexander,  becoming  more  and  more  minute  until 
the  year  b.c.  165.  The  whole  closes  with  a  beautiful  picture 
of  the  Messianic  kingdom,  and  the  resurrection  of  the  dead 
Israelites,  those  who  had  been  faithful,  to  share  in  the  joy 
and  triumph,  and  those  who  had  proved  faithless,  to  ever- 
lasting shame  and  contempt.  It  is  in  this  part  that  the  doc- 
trines of  angels  and  of  the  resurrection  of  the  body  appear. 

Outside  of  the  Book  of  Daniel  the  only  mention  in  the  Old 
Testament  of  a  person  of  that  name  occurs  in  the  Book  of 
Ezekiel.  In  Ezekiel  xiv.  14,  20  Noah,  Daniel,  and  Job 
are  mentioned  as  men  of  extreme  righteousness,  who  might 
possibly  be  supposed  by  their  righteousness  to  save  sinners 
from  destruction,  and  in  Ezekiel  xxviii.  3  we  have  Daniel 
mentioned  as  famous  for  wisdom.  In  the  time  of  Ezekiel 
three  men  were  evidently  famous  in  folklore  for  their  righteous- 
ness, and  Daniel  also  for  his  wisdom.  Of  the  character  of  the 
folklore  which  connected  itself  with  Noah  we  know  something 
from  the  earlier  chapters  of  Genesis.  The  folk  story  of  Job  is 
substantially  contained  in  the  first  two  and  the  last  chapters 
of  that  book  as  we  at  present  have  it.  That  folk  story  was 
made  use  of  later  by  philosophical  writers  as  the  theme  for  the 
great  dramatic  poem  of  Job,  dealing  with  the  question  of  evil 
and  calamity,  which  constitutes  the  bulk  of  our  present  Book 
of  Job,  set  in  between  the  prose  narrative  at  the  commence- 
ment and  the  close.  The  folklore  about  Daniel  lies,  we  may 
fairly  conclude,  at  the  bottom  of  the  stories  in  our  Book  of 
Daniel.  All  the  stories  that  have  come  down  to  us  connect 
this  Daniel  with  the  period  of  the  Babylonian  captivity.  In 
some  of  those  stories  Daniel's  deeds  are  singularly  combined 
with  old  Babylonian  myths,  just  as  in  Wendish  folklore 
Frederick  the  Great  appears  as  the  hero  of  some  stories,  which 
are  otherwise  identical  with  fairy  tales  collected  by  Grimm 
from  various  parts  of  Germany,  and  which  we  know  to  be  part 
of  the  ancient  Teutonic  heritage.  (Similarly,  in  a  Burgundian 
form  of  the  Nibelungenlied,  Burgundian  historical  events  and 
characters  of  the  fourteenth  century  are  strangely  commingled 
with  the  old  Teutonic  myth.) 


3IO   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Turning  to  the  apocryphal  additions  to  the  Book  of  Daniel, 
which  have  come  down  to  us  only  in  a  Greek  form,  we  find 
probably  in  the  story  of  Susanna  a  Babylonian  legend  of  the 
seduction  of  two  old  men  by  the  goddess  of  love.  In  this  old 
Babylonian  legend  Jewish  folklore  made  its  hero,  Daniel, 
play  a  part  as  the  wise  judge  (cf.  Ezek.  xxviii.  3).  In  the 
contest  of  Daniel  with  the  dragon,  in  which  "  Daniel  took 
pitch  and  fat  and  hair,  and  did  seethe  them  together,  and 
made  lumps  thereof,"  we  have  the  old  Babylonian  myth  of  the 
war  between  the  god  Bel  and  the  monster  Tiamat,  which  on 
the  bas-reliefs  is  represented  as  a  dragon.  Growing  out  of  this 
same  myth  of  Bel  and  Tiamat,  we  find  a  variant  story  of 
Daniel's  contest  with  the  dragon,  in  which  Daniel  by  a  wise 
device  is  able  to  convict  the  priests  of  Bel  of  fraud.  This 
shows  more  reflection  and  elaboration  than  the  other.  We 
have  also,  in  the  apocryphal  additions,  a  variant  of  the  story  in 
the  canonical  book  of  Daniel  in  the  lion's  den.  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  on  the  whole  the  stories  in  the  apocryphal  addition 
stand  nearer  than  the  stories  in  our  canonical  book  to  the 
original  folklore  about  Daniel. 

A  considerable  amount  of  folklore  sprang  up  in  the  Exific 
period  and  afterwards,  and  began  to  assume  that  peculiar 
moralistic  tone  with  which  we  are  familiar  in  the  later  Haggadic 
literature.  Even  in  the  Book  of  Kings  we  have  an  Haggadic 
story  (i  Kings  xiii.).  From  a  later  period  we  have  some 
specimens  of  folk  stories  developed  into  what  we  to-day  should 
call  novels  and  novelettes,  like  the  apocryphal  books  of  Judith 
and  Tobit,  and  in  our  canonical  literature,  the  books  of  Esther 
and  Jonah. 

Daniel  was  the  central  figure  of  a  number  of  folk  tales  of  a 
somewhat  similar  character.  There  was  what  we  may  fairly  call 
a  cycle  of  stories  of  which  he  was  the  hero.  Among  these,  be- 
sides the  stories  in  which  Daniel  was  the  hero,  there  were  also 
stories  with  other  heroes.  The  Book  of  Daniel  itself  contains 
one  story — that  of  the  three  children  in  the  fiery  furnace — in 
which  Daniel  is  not  the  hero;  and  in  the  third  chapter  of 
the  apocryphal  book  of  First  Esdras  we  have  another  similar 


THE   BOOK  OF   DANIEL  311 

story  of  the  Three  Pages.  This  mass  of  stories,  beginning  in 
Babylonia,  was  passed  down  from  mouth  to  mouth,  and  at  the 
time  of  the  Maccabsean  revolt  was  familiar  to  the  people  in  the 
vernacular  Aramaic.  Some  of  these  stories  a  patriotic  writer 
of  that  period  used,  recasting  them  as  we  now  have  them  in 
the  Aramaic  portion  of  our  canonical  Book  of  Daniel.  They 
dealt  especially  with  the  wisdom  and  the  pietyof  the  old  folk  hero, 
Daniel,  and,  after  the  manner  of  such  patriotic  tales,  told  how 
he  was  delivered  in  an  extraordinary  manner  from  great  perils, 
and  how  he  discomfited  his  foes,  the  conquerors  and  oppressors 
of  the  Jews.  What  was  necessary  to  stir  the  Jews  to  resistance 
to  Antiochus,  to  inspire  them  with  a  firm  belief  in  the  power 
and  willingness  of  their  God  to  intervene  on  behalf  of  His 
pious  and  oppressed  people,  and  to  fill  their  minds  with  the 
hope  of  deliverance  out  of  tribulation  and  victory  over  their 
heathen  foes,  was  to  give  the  old  folk  stories,  or  rather  a  selec- 
tion of  them,  a  somewhat  more  distinctly  religious  character, 
and  to  touch  and  sharpen  the  details  so  that  they  should  be 
more  clearly  applicable  to  present  conditions.  This  was  done 
by  some  unknown  writer,  who,  making  use  of  the  apocalyptic 
method,  prefaced  and  closed  his  little  collection  of  pious  and 
patriotic  tales  with  two  visions — the  dream  of  Nebuchadnezzar 
and  the  dream  of  Daniel — both  foretelling  the  final  destruc- 
tion of  the  oppressing  Syrian,  and  thus  giving  a  present 
application  to  the  stories  of  Daniel's  deliverance  from  the 
machinations  of  his  foes  and  his  victory  over  the  power  of  the 
heathen  in  the  times  of  Nebuchadnezzar,  Belshazzar,  and 
Darius.  This  little  work  was  written  shortly  after  B.C.  168.  To 
understand  its  full  force  and  the  mighty  influence  which  it 
exercised  upon  the  people,  one  must  read  it  in  connexion  with 
the  First  Book  of  Maccabees.  One  result  of  the  patriotic  up- 
rising of  the  Maccabees  was  to  revive,  along  with  the  religious 
patriotic  hopes  and  feelings  of  the  Hebrew  people,  the  sacred 
language  also.  So  we  find  in  the  Book  of  Psalms  an  outburst 
of  patriotic  and  religious  poetry  from  this  period  in  the  Hebrew 
tongue.  The  small  Book  of  Daniel,  ending,  as  already  pointed 
out,  with  the  words,  "  Here  is  the  end  of  the  matter,"  etc.,  at 


312    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

the  close  of  the  seventh  chapter,  gave  rise  to  further  apocalypses, 
following  the  line  of  the  Aramaic  apocalypses  of  the  second 
and  seventh  chapters  of  our  present  book,  but  written  in 
Hebrew.  These  later  apocalypses,  as  we  have  seen,  are 
somewhat  different  from  their  Aramaic  predecessors,  more 
learned  in  style  and  making  greater  use  of  mystical  inter- 
pretations, mystical  numbers,  and  the  like.  The  detailed 
history  which  they  contain  suggests  also  a  composition  slightly 
later  in  date,  namely  towards  the  close  of  B.C.  165  or  the  com- 
mencement of  E.G.  164,  The  original  Aramaic  work  and  its 
Hebrew  continuation  seem  to  have  been  brought  together 
shortly  in  one  book,  perhaps  by  the  writer  of  these  later 
apocalypses.  To  this  larger  work  was  prefixed  an  introduction, 
also  written  in  the  Hebrew  tongue,  which  undertook  to  give 
some  account  of  Daniel  and  the  other  pious  heroes  mentioned 
in  the  volume,  and  to  explain  from  the  standpoint  of  advanced 
legalism  the  reason  of  their  great  favour  with  God.  In  attach- 
ing this  introduction  to  the  volume,  the  Aramaic  introduction 
to  the  dream  of  Nebuchadnezzer  was  cut  out. 

Later,  in  Alexandria,  some  of  the  other  stories  floating 
among  the  people  with  regard  to  Daniel  were  naturally  enough 
incorporated  with  the  book  which  bore  the  name  of  Daniel. 
A  hymn  and  prayer  which  were  composed  in  the  name  of  the 
three  children  in  the  fiery  furnace  are  also  among  the  additions 
which  we  owe  to  the  Alexandrian  Jews. 

That  the  apocalypse  of  Daniel  exerted  an  immense  influence 
on  the  thought  of  the  Hebrew  people  is  clear  from  the  large 
amount  of  apocalyptic  literature  which  was  developed  in  the 
period  immediately  succeeding,  which,  as  already  pointed  out 
in-  a  former  chapter,  played  a  very  important  part  in  the 
development  of  the  Messianic  hope.  ^Vhile  the  Book  of 
Daniel  is  not  classed  among  the  Prophets  of  the  Hebrew 
canon,  on  account,  as  already  mentioned,  of  its  late  origin, 
we  cannot  but  count  it  a  prophetical  book.  It  was  the  suc- 
cessor of  the  older  school  of  prophecy  and  is  at  one  with  . 
the  older  prophetical  writings  in  the  belief  in  the  eternal 
victory  of  the  right  and  the  glorious  coming  of  the  Kingdom 


THE   BOOK   OF   DANIEL  313 

of  God.  By  its  use  of  folklore  for  prophetic  purposes  it  took 
hold,  in  a  very  peculiar  way,  of  the  hearts  of  the  people,  and 
in  the  midst  of  desperate  trials  and  perils  inspired  them  with  a 
belief  and  trust  in  God  such  as  no  academic  statement  of 
God's  purpose,  God's  justice,  God's  might,  and  God's  right 
could  have  achieved.  It  was  divinely  fitted  for  the  time  at 
which  it  appeared,  and  not  for  that  time  only.  The  history 
of  its  use  in  the  Jewish  and  the  Christian  Church  has  proved 
its  right  to  the  claim  of  inspiration.  It  has  strengthened 
untold  thousands  in  trial  and  filled  them  with  belief  in 
deliverance  and  in  the  ultimate  victory  of  God's  cause. 


APPENDIX 


APPENDIX 

ON 

THE   VIRGIN   BIRTH 


T 


HE  fourteenth  verse  of  the  seventh  chapter  of  Isaiah  is 
_  one  of  those  passages  in  which  the  Septuagint  Greek 
version  represents  the  original  reading.  In  the  Hebrew  this 
verse  reads,  literally  translated:  "Therefore,  the  Lord,  He 
giveth  you  a  sign.  The  young  woman  is  pregnant,  and 
beareth  a  son,  and  calleth  his  name  God  with  us."  Parallel 
passages  for  the  words  following  nJD^rn,  "  the  young  woman," 
are  Genesis  xvi.  1 1  :  "  Behold,  thou  art  pregnant,  and  bearest 
a  son,  and  callest  his  name  Ishmael,"  and  Judges  xiii.  5  : 
"  Behold,  thou  art  pregnant,  and  bearest  a  son."  For  the 
word  n-in,  as  an  adjective  meaning,  not  "she  shall  con- 
ceive," but  "pregnant,"  compare  Genesis  xxxviii.  24,  25; 
Exodus  xxi.  22;  I  Samuel  iv.  19;  2  Samuel  xi.  5 ;  Isaiah 
xxvi  17  •  Jeremiah  xxxi.  8.  No  other  meaning  can  be  given 
to  this  wo^d  than  "pregnant,"  "with  child";  and  without  some 
other  word  to  denote  future  time  it  must  indicate  a  present 

condition.  „        .  , 

But  it  is  the  word  n07rn,  "the  young  woman,  which 
constitutes  the  real  difficulty  of  the  passage.  Professors 
Cheyne,  G.  A.  Smith,  and  Dillmann  all  translate  it  literally  as 
"  the  young  woman,"  But  what  young  woman  ?  Having  the 
article  prefixed,  it  must  be  either  some  specific  young  woman, 
well  known  or  previously  referred  to,  or  young  women  as  a 
class  distinguished  from  other  classes.  But  it  is  manifestly 
neither  of  these ;  in  fact,  commentators  have  practically  dis- 
regarded the  article  or  explained  it  away,  treating  the  young 
woman"  as  being  some  indefinite  young  woman.     1  rolessor 

317 


3i8    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Briggs^  points  out  the  impossibility  of  this  treatment  of  the 
article.  He  proposes  to  regard  n  as  the  sign  of  the  vocative, 
and  translates  :  "  Lo,  young  woman,  thou  art  pregnant,  and 
about  to  bear  a  son,  and  call  his  name  Immanuel."  But 
this  treatment  of  n  alone,  with  no  further  indication  of  the 
vocative,  is  grammatically  untenable  (Dillmann).  Furthermore, 
putting  the  grammatical  question  aside,  the  meanings  obtained 
by  Briggs,  Dillmann,  Smith,  and  Cheyne  all  alike  seem  very 
weak,  to  say  the  least,  and  the  sign  ill-chosen  and  clumsily 
presented.  Smith  ^  comments  upon  the  passage  thus :  "  A 
child,"  he  says,  "shall  shortly  be  born,  to  whom  his  mother 
shall  give  the  name  Im-manu-El — God  with  us.  By  the  time 
this  child  comes  to  years  of  discretion,  he  shall  eat  butter  and 
honey.  Isaiah  then  explains  the  riddle.  He  does  not,  how- 
ever, explain  who  the  mother  is,  having  described  her  vaguely 
as  «,  or  the  you?ig  'W07nan  of  marriageable  age ;  for  that  is  not 
necessary  to  the  sign,  which  is  to  consist  in  the  Child's  own 
experience.  To  this  latter  he  limits  his  explanation."  He 
throws  aside  as  irrelevant  and  unimportant  a  part  of  the  verse 
on  which  the  prophet  lays  much  stress,  converts  ''''the  young 
woman"  into  "«  young  woman," and  then  drops  her  altogether 
as  insignificant  and  unmeaning.  That  the  mother  is  both 
necessary  and  important  in  this  sign  of  the  birth  of  Immanuel 
is  evinced  by  the  emphasis  laid  upon  her  in  the  verse,  the 
space  allotted  to  her,  and  the  article  attached  to  her  name  as 
one  well  known.  The  Septuagint  reads  the  virgin,  which  is 
the  translation  of  n'pinan.  A  comparison  of  the  Septuagint 
with  the  Hebrew  consonant  text  shows  us  in  every  other  word 
in  the  verse  a  complete  agreement,  evidence  of  a  conscientious 
translation,  and  a  correct  transmission.  This  is  well  brought 
out  by  the  treatment  in  the  Septuagint  of  the  word  which 
the  Masoretes  point  ^^"^i^,  qarath,  she  called,  apparently  in- 
tending thereby  the  third  person,  singular,  feminine.  The 
Septuagint  read  the  same  consonants,  but  translated  thou  shall 
call,  pronouncing  the  word  ^^li^,  qaratha,  thou  calledst. 

^  Messianic  Prophecy,  p.  195,  note.       "  The  Book  of  Isaiah,  i.  p.  115. 


APPENDIX  319 

Now,  when  we  asked  the  question,  Which  change  would 
have  been  more  readily  made,  from  the  young  wo7na?i  to  the 
virgin,  or  vice  versa  ?  I  think  it  must  be  admitted  that,  suppos- 
ing an  original  the  young  ivoman,  it  would  be  very  difficult  to 
find  any  reason  for  a  change  to  the  virgin  \  whereas,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  statement  that  a  virgin  should  become  a 
mother,  might  very  well  have  offended  some  stupid  literalist, 
even  if  there  were  nothing  else  involved,  and  led  to  the 
substitution  of  riD^i;,  young  woman,  for  nbina,  virgin.  The 
presumption  in  favour  of  the  Septuagint  text,  which  is  very 
strong,  and  would  be  regarded  as  sufficient  evidence  in  a  less 
important  verse,  is  greatly  strengthened  by  the  testimony  of 
the  New  Testament,  and  of  the  Peshitto  Syriac  version.  The 
latter  agrees  with  the  Septuagint  in  reading  the  virgin.  The 
New  Testament  gives  independent  evidence  of  the  same  read- 
ing in  the  received  Hebrew  text  of  the  second  half  of  the 
first  century  of  our  era.  Neither  Matthew  i.  23  nor  Luke 
i.  31  is  a  citation  from  the  Septuagint;  nor  are  they,  probably, 
taken  directly  from  the  Hebrew.  They  seem,  and  more 
particularly  is  this  true  of  the  passage  in  St.  Matthew's  Gospel, 
to  be  translations  from  a  secondary  source,  probably  a  tradi- 
tional Aramaic  rendering  of  the  Hebrew,  an  oral  Targum, 
current  among  the  Jews  at  that  time.  They  transmit  to  us 
the  virgin,  and  not  the  young  woman,  as  the  current  translation 
of  the  passage  at  the  period  of  the  composition  of  both  the 
Gospel  of  St.  Matthew  and  the  Gospel  of  St.  Luke,  and  thus 
testify  that  n^inin  and  not  nD^prn  was  read  in  the  received 
texts  of  that  day. 

But,  substituting  nSinnn  for  T\'C!^)ir\,  and  translating,  "Be- 
hold, the  virgin  is  with  child,  and  is  about  to  bear  a  son,  and 
shall  call  (or  'thou  shalt  call')  his  name  Emmanuel,"  what  is 
the  reference  in  nbinnn,  the  virgin  7  Who  is  this  virgin? 
Micah  iv.  8-10  is  an  excellent  commentary  on  our  passage. 
There  we  see  the  daughter  of  Zion  in  the  pangs,  as  it  were,  of 
childbirth:  "Writhe  and  twist,  O  daughter  of  Zion,  like  a 
woman  in  travail."  The  afflictions  which  befall  the  land,  in- 
cluding the  capture  of  Jerusalem  itself,  are  the  travail  pangs 


320   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

of  the  daughter  of  Zion,  through  which  only  can  deliverance 
come.  But  not  only  is  the  daughter  of  Zion  likened  to  one 
that  is  in  travail;  in  the  next  chapter  the  figure  is  dropped, 
and  she  is  spoken  of  as  actually  bringing  forth  a  child.  So 
the  prophet  says  (v.  3),  "  Therefore  He  giveth  them  over  until 
she  that  travaileth  hath  brought  forth."  Then  follows  the 
picture  of  the  glorious  reign  of  the  Messiah,  born  of  the 
daughter  of  Zion  out  of  the  travail  of  her  affliction  at  the  hand 
of  the  Assyrians.  The  whole  passage  is  exactly  parallel  with 
our  passage.  Here  also  we  have  the  virgin  pregnant  with  a 
child,  who  shall  be  "  God  with  us."  The  following  verses 
narrate  the  desolation  of  the  land,  but  through  this  "  God- 
with-us"  child  of  the  virgin  the  kingdom  shall  be  restored 
more  glorious  than  before.  Chapter  viii.  takes  up  this  same 
*'  God  with  us."  When  the  Assyrians  shall  appear  to  have 
destroyed  all,  there  shall  still  remain  this  "  God  with  us,"  by 
which  the  redemption  and  restoration  shall  be  brought  about. 
This  "  God  with  us  "  is  the  child  of  the  virgin  in  Isaiah  vii.  14  ; 
and  it  is  the  same  child,  we  see  by  comparing  the  passages, 
who  shall  be  the  child  of  the  travailing  daughter  of  Zion 
depicted  in  Micah  v.  2.  The  virgin  of  Isaiah  vii.  14  is,  then, 
none  other  than  the  virgin  daughter  of  Zion,  and  the  con- 
temporary prophets,  Isaiah  and  Micah,  are  found  to  be  making 
use  of  the  same  figure,  influenced  by  the  same  spirit. 

Our  next  consideration  is  the  use  of  the  word  "virgin"  in 
reference  to  a  city  or  people,  and  more  particularly  in  re- 
ference to  Jerusalem  and  Judah.  Isaiah  xxxvii.  22  and 
Lamentations  ii.  13  use  the  full  phrase,  "virgin  daughter  of 
Zion " ;  while  Jeremiah  xiv.  1 7  has  "  virgin  daughter  of  my 
people,"  and  Lamentations  i.  15,  "virgin  daughter  of  Judah." 
Micah  uses  both  "  daughter  of  Zion "  and  "  daughter  of 
Jerusalem."  Amos  v.  2  and  Jeremiah  xxxi.  4,  21  use 
"virgin  of  Israel,"  which  is,  perhaps,  the  closest  to  our  pass- 
age. We  also  find  foreign  nations  personified  in  a  similar 
manner,  as  "virgin  daughter  of  Zidon"  (Isa.  xxiii.  12), 
"virgin  daughter  of  Babylon"  (Isa.  xlvii.  i),  and  "virgin 
daughter  of  Egypt"  (Jer.  xlvi.  11). 


APPENDIX  321 

The  Targum  on  Isaiah  agrees  with  the  Hebrew  text  in 
writing  riD^m,  the  young  womatt,  in  place  of  n^in^n,  the 
virgin,  in  this  verse,  and  Jerome  found  the  same  word  in  the 
Hebrew  texts  of  his  day.  The  evidence  seems  to  show  that 
originally,  and  as  late  as  the  second  half  of  the  first  century 
after  Christ,  the  Hebrew  texts  read  n^inin,  the  virgin.  Was 
the  change  to  r\t:hv7\i  the  young  woviafi,  deliberately  meant 
to  exclude  the  Christian  interpretation  of  the  passage,  or  was 
it  a  mere  blunder,  the  adoption  into  the  text  of  the  emenda- 
tion of  a  stupid  literalist  ? 


INDEX 


Alamoth,  189 

Alexandrian  Jews,  5,  7  ff.,  20  f. ,  23, 

83,  194 
Alexandrinus,  Codex,  9,  256 
Alfred's  dooms,  96  f. 
Al-taschith,  184 

American  use  of  the  Psalter,  227  ff. 
Analysis    of    the    contents    of    the 

Psalter,  177  ff. 
Angelology  of  the  Psalter,  180 
Anglican  use  of  the  Psalter,  I94ff., 

2I5ff. 

Animism,  1 14 

Apocalyptic  literature,  145,  312 

Apocrypha,  The  Old  Testament,  9, 

33 

Apocryphal  additions  to  Daniel,  310 

Gospels,  36 

Arab  worship  and  sacrifice,  276  ff., 

285 
Arak  el-Emir  inscription,  271 
Aramaean  inscriptions,  268  f. 
Aramaic  in  Daniel,  307 
Archaeology  and  the  Bible,  237  ff. 
Ark,  The,  Ii6f,  122,  284  ff. 
Arrangement  of  the  01 ;  Testament, 

3?  ^5 
Articles  of  Religion,  The  XXXIX., 

24  ff 
Asaph  Psalms,  165  ff.,  178  f. 
Asherah,  The,  128 
Asmonrean  dynasty,  The,  140  f. 
Assyrian  records,  245,  253  f. 
Astruc,  90 

Augustine,  St.,  49  f-.  196 
Authorised  (or  King  James)  Version, 

15,  198 
Authority  and  Reason,  28  ff. 
Avesta,  The,  240  f. 


Azazel,  114 
Azkara,  186,  199 

Baal  Lebanon  inscription,  267 

worship,  125  f. 

Babylonian  inscriptions,  246 ff.,  253, 
266  f. 

psalmody,  176 

Barrier  inscription,  253 

Eaur,  240 

Behistun  inscription,  298  ff. 

Behrmann,  305 

Benedicite,  The,  225 

Bentley,  85  f. 

Bible  Study,  51,  81  ff. 

Bliss,  Dr.,  259,  268,  277 

Book  of  the  Covenant,  114,  120 

Dead,  289 

Books  in  early  times,  263  ff. 
Briggs,  Prof.,  318 

Canaan,  Language  of,  24S 
Canon  of  Old  Testament,  4 
Carlstadt,  87 
Casting  of  lots,  123 
Centralisation  of  Hebrew  worship, 

122  ff. 
Ceremonial  Law,  The,  25 
Cheyne,  Prof.,  167, 173.  iSjf-.3»7f- 
Christ  and  Messianic  prophecy,  15 if. 

the  Decalogue,  27  f.,  70  f. 

■  Messiahship,  151 

Old  Testament,  55  ff. 

,  Davidic  descent  of,  147 

Divinity  and    Manhood  of, 


40  ff. ,  51 
Christ's  birth  in  Bethlehem,  147  f. 

resurrection,  150 

temptations,  56  ff. 


323 


324   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 


Christ's  virgin  birth,  150 

Chronicles  and  the  Psalter,  166  f. 

Chronology,  Usher's,  I3f. 

Circumcision,  107 

Clay  tablets.  Use  of,  256  ff. 

Clean  and  unclean,  108  ff. 

Commandments,  Moral  and  cere- 
monial, 25  ff. 

Comparative  philology,  92  ff. 

Corruptions  in  the  Hebrew  text, 
172,  258  f.,  304,  306,  319 

Creeds,  The,  24 

Cretan  tablets,  260,  267 

Criticism,  The  Newer,  39  ff. ,  81  ff., 
237  f. 

Daniel,  The  Book  of,  293  ff. 
Darwin,  94 

David  and  Hebrew  Psalmody,  175 
Messianic   expectation, 

135  ff. 
Decalogue,  The,  26  ff.,  289  f. 
written  on  stone  tablets, 

261 
Dedication,  Feast  of  the,  187 
Deification  of  the  Virgin,  42  f. ,  53 
De  la  Peyrere,  88 
Deuteronomy,  The  Book  of,  129  f. 
Dillmann,  Prof.,  317  f. 
Docetic  Gospel  of  St.  Peter,  40  f. 
Doxologies,  200  ff. 
Du  Maes,  88  f. 

Early  Christian  Psalmody,  205  ff. 

Edersheim,  Dr.,  146 

Egyptian  discoveries,  249  ff.,  253  ff. 

Eichhorn,  81  f.,  90 

Enoch,  The  Book  of,  30,  58,  145 

Epistles  of  Phalaris,  The,  S6 

Evolution,  94 

of  Israel,  99  ff. 

Ewald,  87,  91  f.,  242 
Exile,  The,  132  f.,  174 
Ezekiel,  130  ff. 

Fall  of  Samaria,  The,  126  f. 
Flood  legend.  The,  247  f. 
Folklore  in  Daniel,  301,  308  f. 
Foreign  worship  in  Israel,  125  ff.  129 
Fourth  Commandment,  The,  27 

Gallican  Psalter,  The,  197 
Geddes,  90 


Giesebrecht,  302 

Gilgal,  277  f. 

Gittith,  185 

God,  The  names  of,  169  f. 

Gospel  of  St.  Peter,  Docetic,  40  f. 

Greek   canon   of  New  Testament, 

20  f. 
words  in  Daniel,  294 

Hallel,  The,  200 

Hebrew  Bible,  Divisions  of  the,  3 

Priesthood,  The,  119  ff. 

,  Pronunciation  of,  273  ff. 

ritual,  113  ff. 

script  (early),  268  ff. 

(modern),  270  ff. 

Hebrews,  Religious  development  of 

the,  280  ff. 

,  The,  in  Egypt,  286  f. 

Hexateuch,  The,  169  f.,  174,  177, 

241,  252 
Higgaion,  190 
Higher  Criticism,  The,  39  ff.,  81  ff., 

237  f. 
Hilprecht,  Prof.,  176 
Hind  of  the  morning,  187 
Historical  inaccuracies  in    Daniel, 

294 
Hobbes,  88 

Immortality  among  the  Hebrews, 
no,  181  ff. 

Imprecations  in  the  Psalms,  226  f. 

Incarnation,  The,  and  Newer  Criti- 
cism, 39  ff.,  52  ff. 

Inspiration  of  Scripture,  24  f. ,  34 

Isaiah,  The  Book  of,  241 

,  The  call  of,  128 

,  Virgin  birth  in,  317  ff. 

Isaiahs,  The  two,  134 

Itala  version.  The,  195 

Jeduthun,  190 

Jerome,  St.,  49,  195  ff. 

John  Baptist  and  Elijah,  63,  148  f. 

Jonah,  The  Book  of,  134 

,  The  sign  of,  63  ff. 

Judas  Maccabceus,  140 

Kinah  verse,  216 

Korah  Psalter,  i7iff.,  178 

Lammenazzeah,  189 


INDEX 


J-3 


Latin  canon  of  New  Testament,  20, 

23 
Law,  The  Mosaic,  4 
Le  Clerc,  81  f.,  89 
Levi  and  the  Levites,  iigf.,  I30ff. 
Levirate  marriage,  114 
Liturgies,  Early  Christian,  207  ff. 
Localisation  of  Divinity,   104,  285, 

287 
Luther,  igf.,  88 

Maccabees,  The,  134,  140 

Mahalath,  190 

Marseilles    sacrificial    tables,    115, 

261,  268 
Maschil,  165,  190 
Matthew's,   St.,  quotation    of  Old 

Testament,  66  ff. 
Mazzebah,  278 
Memorial  psalms,  186 
Messianic  hope,  The,  135  ff. 
Michtam,  165,  184,  189 
Miserere,  The,  225 
Mizmor,  165,  189 
Moabite  Stone,  The,  267 
Modern  study  of  Bible,  81  ff. 
Monotheistic  worship,  117  f. 
Moses,  116  ff.,  136,  284  ff. 
Muth-labben,  190 

Nabatsean  inscriptions,  271 

Nature  worship,  105  ff. 

Nazareth  and  nezer,  71  f. 

Neginoth,  189 

Nehiloth,  189 

Nethinim,  119 

New   Testament,    Arrangement    of 

books,  16  ff. 
Newer  Criticism,  The,  39  ff.,  81  ff., 

237  f. 
Niebuhr,  86  f. 

Nippur,  Discoveries  at,  257,  261 
Noldeke,  305 

Old    Testament,    Arrangement    of 

books,  3,   15 
,    Canon  of  the,  4, 

134 
,     Development    of 

the,  95  ff- 
Origen,  195 


Palestine,  Geography  of,  251  ff. 

,  Inscriptions  in,  266  ff. 

Pentateuch,  The  Jewish,  4,  13,  16 

,  The  Samaritan,  4, 269  f. 

Persian  words  in  Daniel,  294 

Pharisees,  The,  182 

Phoenician  script,  266  ff. 

Pietistic  glosses,  258  f. 

Praise   Song   of  David,  The,   163, 

179 
Prayers  of  David,  The,   161,   170, 

178  f.,  191 
Presbyterian  views  of  Inspiration, 

34 
Priest  Code,  The,  133,  169  f.,  177 
Priesthood,  The,  119  ff.,  125,  133, 

179 
Prophets,  The,  5,  9 

,  The,  and  Psalmody,  176  f. 

Psalm  headings,  184  ff. 
Psalms  for  Sabbath  and  other  days, 
188,  199  f. 

,  Imprecations  in  the,  226  f. 

Psalter,  Growth  of  the  Jewish,  1 55  ff. 
,  Mechanical  use  of  the,  209  ft. 

of  Solomon,  140  f.,  203  f. 

of  thesonsof  Korah,  171  ff. , 

178 

,The  books  of  the,  159  f. 

,The,  and  personal  immor- 
tality, 181 

,The,  and  popular  theology, 

I5« 

,The  Gallican,  197 

,The  Prayer   Book,   194  ff., 

215  ff. 

Quotation  of  Old  Testament  in  New 
Testament,  58,  66  ff.,  150  f. 

Rashi,  48 

Reason  and  Authority,  28  ff. 

Reformation,  The,  and  the  Bible, 

49f.,87ff 
Religious  conservatism,  1 12  ff. 

evolution  of  Israel,  99  ff., 

2S0  ff. 
Renaissance,  The,  and   the   Bible, 

84  ff 
Revised   (or    Canterbury)   Version, 

15  f.,  22 
Ritual,  113  ff. 
Rolls,  The,  7 


326  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 


Sacred  places,  loi  f.,  I24f. 
Sacrifice,  93,  103  f.,  132,  278  fif. 

among  the  Arabs,  285 

in  the  Psalter,  179  f. 

Saddu  >;ees,  The,  182 

Samaria,  The  fall  of,  126  f. 

Samaritan  Bible,  The,  4,  269  f. 

Saxon  Chronicle,  The,  97 

Sayce,  Prof.,  288 

Schrader,  300 

Scripture  and  tradition,  24 

,  Inspiration  of,  24  f. ,  34 

Selah,  189  f. 

Septuagint,  The,  5  f.,  8,  318  f. 

Sermon  on  the  Mount,  58  ff. 

Sheminith,  189 

Shiggaion,  190 

Siloah  inscription,  252,  268 

Simon,  Father,  89 

Sin  and  expiation,  109,  142  f. 

Sinaiticus,  Codex,  256 

Smith,  Prof.  G.  A.,  252,  317  f. 

,  Prof.   Robertson,  174 

Songs  of  Degrees,  163,  191 
Spino7.a,  87,  89 
Spirit  world.  The,  iiof. 
Stone  worship,  276  fif. 
Syriac  Version,  The,  10,  319 

Taboo,  10 1  f. 
Talmud,  The,  145  ff. 


Targums,  143  ff.,  321 
Tatian's  Diatessaron,  96 
Tel  el-Amarna  tablets,  246,  259,  266 
Tel  es-Safi  temple,  277,  282 
Tel  Hesy  tablet,  259,  266 
Temple,  The,  115,  123  f. 
Temptations,  Christ's,  56  fif. 
Tischendorf,  10,  21 

Urim  and  Thummim,  123,  282 
Usher's  Chronology,  I3f. 

Vater,  91 

Vaticanus,  Codex,  9,  256 

Veda,  The,  47,  240  f. 

Venite,  The,  222 

Vintage  psalms,  184  fif. 

Virgin  birth  in  Isaiah,  The,  317  ff. 

,  Christ's,  150 

— ,  Deification  of  the,  42  f.,  53 


Vowel  points  in  Hebrew,  274,  304, 

306 
Vulgate,  The  Latin,  11  f,,  197 

Weber,  145 

Writings  (or  Hagiographa),  The,  7, 

9,  12 
Wiinsche,  150 

Zinjirli,  Discoveries  at,  268 
Zwingli,  20 


INDEX   TO   PASSAGES   OF   SCRIPTURE. 


Genesis  i.,  pp.  48,  181 

p.  104  :  xxxi.  45  ff. 

xlix.  10,  p.  144 
Exodus  iii.  6,  pp.  68,  73  ;  xix., 

22,  p.  317;  xxi.  24,  p.  61 

•4,  p.  262 
Leviticus  i.,  p.  132;  iv,,  p.  no 

xix.  18,  pp.  27,  70  f.;  xxiv 


xiv 

.,  pp. 

248  f., 

253; 

xvi. 

II, 

P- 

3 

[7; 

xxvii 

.  17 

p. 

278; 

XXXVl. 

31,  p. 

88; 

xxxvni. 

24 

i., 

P- 

317 

PP-.  55  ff-;  xxi.-xxiii., 
xxiv.  7,  p.  264;  xxxi. 


pp.    114,    120;    XXI. 

18,  p.  261  ;  xxxii. 


vii.  II  f.,  p.  187;  xi,,  p.  62;  xvii. 
7f.,  p.  186;  xxiv.  20,  p.  61 


p.  122; 


Numbers  X.  35  f.,  p.  171;  xvi.,  p.  121;  xxi.  17  f.,  p.  102;  xxi.  30,  p.  267 
Deuteronomy  i.  5,  pp.  261  f. ;  vi.  4.,  p.  70:  vi.  5,  pp.  27,  70  f.;  ix.  9,  p.  261  ; 

X.  35  f.,  p.  157;  xiv.,  p.  62;  xix.  21,  p.  61 ;  xxiii.  6,  p.  61;  xxiv.  i, 

pp.  59,  264;  xxvi.  5,  p.  248;  xxvii.  8,  p.  261 
Joshua  i.  8,  p.  264;  iv.  f.,  p.  278;  xii.  23,  p.  278 
judges  V.  4,  p.  287;  xiii.  5,  p.  317;  xvii.,  pp.  119,  122 
I  Samuel,  ii.   p.   121  ;  iv.    19,  p.  317;  xiii.   9ff.,  p.  I2I  ;  xiv.   31  fif.,  pp. 

103.  279  ;  xxvi.  19,  p.  104 


INDEX  327 

2  Samuel  vii.  16,  p.  138  ;  viii.  18,  p.  122 ;  xi.  5,  p.  317  ;  xxi.,  p.  no 

1  Kings  vu.  36,  p.  261  ;  xiii.,  p.  310;  xix.  8,  p.  287 

2  Kings  ii.   11,  p.   140;  iii.  4ff.,  p.  267  ;  iv.   39,  p.   305;  v.  5,  p.  264; 

V.  17,  p.  104  ;  xvi.  10  ff.,  p.  264  ;  xxii.  8,  p.  88 

1  Chronicles  iv.  23,  p.  252;  xvi.  8  ff.,  p.  167;  xvi.,  pp.  157,  165,  167, 

200 

2  Chronicles  vi.  40 ff.,  p.  167  ;  xxiv.  20 f.,  p.  69;  xxvi.  21  ff.,  p.  121 
Nehemiah  i.  5ff.,  p.  169;  viii.  9,  p.  89;  xii.  22,  p.  306;  xiii.  28,  p.  269 
Jobxiv.  17,  p.  259;  xix.  24,  p.  262;  xxxi.  35,  p.  264;  xxxii.-xxxvii.,  pp. 

158,  182 

Psalms  i.,  p.  161;  ii.,  p.  161 ;  iii.-xli.  p.  161;  iii.  p.  157;  iv.,  pp.  156, 
212;  ix.  f.,  pp.  156,  162,  175;  ix.,  p.  157;  xiv.,  p.  163;  xviii.,  p.  i88; 
xix.  8ff.,  p.  175;  xxii.  f.,  p.  217;  xxix.,  pp.  175,  i88f.;  xxx.,  p.  1S7; 
xxxviii.,  p.  186;  xl.,  pp.  157,  164;  xli.  13,  pp.  159,  201;  xiii.  f., 
pp.  156,  217  f.;  xiii,,  pp.  102,  157,  172;  xliv.,  pp.  156,  21S;  xlv., 
PP-  171,  I73>  192;  xlv.  2,  p.  262;  xlvi.,  pp.  157,  173,  218;  xlix,, 
p.  171;  Ii.  2of.,  p.  157;  liii.,  p.  163;  Ivi.  13,  p.  170;  Ivii.,  p.  157; 
Ix.,  pp.  157,  189;  Ixi.,  p.  171;  Ixv.  ff.,  p.  171;  Ixviii.,  pp.  157,  171; 
Ixviii.  12  ff.,  p.  224;  Ixix.  23  ff.,  pp.  225  f. ;  Ixx.,  pp.  164,  186; 
Ixxii.  f.,  p.  160;  Ixxii.  18  f.,  pp.  159,  201;  Ixxiv.,  p.  174;  Ixxviii.  f., 
p.  174;  Ixxx.  pp.  157,  173;  Ixxxi.,  p.  173;  Ixxxiii.  6ff.,  p.  174; 
Ixxxiv.  ff.,  p.  161;  Ixxxvi.,  pp.  157,  168;  Ixxxvi.  10,  p.  180;  Ixxxix,, 
p.  168;  Ixxxix.  52,  pp.  159,  201;  xcii.,  pp.  188,  199;  xcv.,  pp.  212, 
222;  xcvi.,  p.  157;  xcvi.  4f.,  p.  180;  c,  p.  186;  ciii.,  p.  159;  civ.  7, 
p.  181;  cv.  ff.,  p.  157;  cvi.  28,  p.  180;  cvi.  48,  pp.  159,  201;  cviii., 
pp.  164  f.  200;  cix.  pp.  61,  165,  226;  ex.  pp.  74,  140;  cxi.  ff., 
pp.  163,  201;  cxviii.,  p.  157;  cxviii.  22 f.,  p.  73;  cxviii.  27,  pp.  179, 
223  f.;  cxx.  ff.,  p.  163;  cxxxiv.,  p.  201;  cxxxvi.,  p.  157;  cxxxvii., 
pp.  225  f.  ;  cxxxviii.,  pp.  163,  167;  cxxxix.,  p.  167;  cxlv.  ff.,  pp.  163, 
167;  cxlvii.  15,  p.  181 ;  cl.,  pp.  159,  201 

Proverbs  xxv.  i,  pp.  127,  264 

Canticles  viii.  9,  p.  261 

Isaiah  iii.  23,  p.  262;  vi.,  p.  141;  vii.  9,  p.  66;  vii.  14,  pp.  16,  317; 
viii.,  p.  320;  viii.  I,  p.  262;  viii.  16,  p.  258;  ix.  I  ff.,  p.  138;  xi.  I, 
pp.  71,  138,  144;  XV.  2,  p.  267;  xvi.  10,  p.  185;  xix.  19,  p.  282; 
xxiii.  12,  p.  320;  xxvi.  17,  p.  317;  xxx.  8,  p.  264  ;  xxxvii.  22,  p.  320; 
xlvii.  17,  p.  320;  Ivi.  7,  p.  73;  Ixv.  8,  p.  184 

Jeremiah  iii.  i,  p.  59;  iii.  16,  p.  291;  viii.  8,  p.  262;  xiv.  17,  p.  320; 
xvii.  I,  p.  262;  XX.  p.  176;  xxii.  18,  p.  IIO;  xxiii.  5,  pp.  139,  144; 
xxix.  22,  p.  301;  x:.x.  9,  p.  139;  xxxi.  4,  p.  320;  xxxi.  8,  p.  317; 
xxxii.  II;  p.  256;  xxxii.  12,  p.  264;  xxxii.  14,  p.  257;  xxxiii.  ii, 
p.  157;  xxxvi.  23,  p.  263;  xlvi.  II,  p.  320 

Lamentations  i.  15,  p.  320;  ii.  13,  p.  320 

Ezekiel  ii.  10,  p.  263;  x.  2,  p.  263;  xiv.  14,  p.  309;  xxvii.  5,  p.  261; 
xxviii.  3,  p.  309;  xxxiv.  23,  p.  139;  xxxvii.  24  f.,  p.  139 

Daniel  i.,  pp.  62,  307 ;  iv.  8,  p.  303;  v.  8,  p.  304;  v.  25  ff,,  pp.  303  ff. ; 
vi.  29,  p.  306;  viii.  14,  p.  308;  ix.  2,  pp.  264,  293;  ix.  25  f.,  p.  135: 
xi.  2,  p.  296;  xii.  p.  296 

Hosea  iii.  4  f.,  p.  138 

Amos  V.  2,  p.  320;  V.  23,  p.  173;  ix.  ii,  p.  138 

Micah  iv.  8ff.,  p.  319;  v.  2,  pp.  139,  144;  v.  3,  p.  320 

Habakkuk  ii.  2,  pp.  261  f. ;  iii,  3,  p.  287;  iii.  iS,  p.  144 

Haggai  ii.  23,  p.  139 


328   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  NEW  SCHOLARSHIP 

Zechariah  iv.  yff.,  p.  139;  vi.  I2f.,  p.  140;  ix.  9,  p.  67;  xiii.  3ff. ,  p.  130 

Malachi  iii.  i,  p.  63;  iv.  5,  p.  63 

I  Maccabees  iv.  52  ff.,  p.  187 

Matthew  i.  23,  p.  319;  ii.  23,  p.  146;  iv.,  p.  55;  v.  17,  18,  pp.  58,  270; 

V.  21  ff.,  p.  75;  V.  22,  p.  72;  V.  31,  p.  59;  V.  33,  p.  60;  V.  38,  39, 

p.  60;  V.  43,  p.  61;  xi.  10,  p.  63;  xii.  38  ff.,  p.  63;  xiii.  13  f.,  p.  66; 

XV.  4,  p.  68;  XV.   II  ff.,  p.   61 ;  xix.,  pp.   59,   70;  xxi.   2  ff.,  p.  67; 

xxi.  13,  p.  73;  xxi.  42,  p.  7S;  xxii.  23  ff.,  p.  68;  xxii.  36  ff.,  p.  70; 

xxii.  41  ff,  p.  73;  xxiii.  35,  p.  68;  xxiv.  15,  p.  69;  xxiv.  36  f.,  p.  69 
Mark  iv.   11  f,  p.  66;  vii.   10,  p.  68;  vii.  15  ff,,  p.  61;  xi.,  pp.  67,  73; 

xii.  10,  p.  73;  xii.  18  ff.,  p.  68;  xiii.  14,  p.  69 
Luke  i.  31,  p.  319;  iv.,  p.  55;  vi.  29,  p.  61;  viii.  10,  p.  66;  x.  25,  p.  71 ; 

xi.  29  ff.,  p.  64;   xix.,  pp.  67,  73;   XX.  17,  p.  73;   XX.  27,  p.  68; 

xxi.,  p.  70 
John  iv.,  p.  62;  X.  22,  p.  187 
Acts  vii.  22,  p.  284;  xvii.  28,  p.  58 
I  John  V.  7,  p.  72 
Jude  14,  p.  58 


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